The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has been regulating ads for over 50 years now. At first it seemed rather a lost cause as an unruly industry largely ignored it but since then it’s become established as a mostly sensible ...
Read More »ASA’s annual report shows that tech is taking the load – digital and influencers lead complaints
The Advertising Standards Authority has a lot on its plate now that it has the whole digital world to police on top of traditional media, but its annual report, published today, would have us believe that it’s keeping up with ...
Read More »ASA deals with adland outbreak of Tourette’s
UK adland regulator the ASA is dealing with a seeming outbreak of Tourette’s this Christmas – our old friend BrewDog is in trouble again (this time with the assistance of Uncommon Creative Studio) for its motherfucker poster (it doesn’t actually ...
Read More »GoCompare’s change of ad tack sparks complaints rush
Are Chris Wilkins and Sian Vickers still available? CoCompare.com abandoned its long-serving in-house creative team – the inventors with director Graham Rose of the noisy Gio Compario – as a shiny new CMO moved the business to shiny agency Droga5, ...
Read More »Jamie Williams of Isobel: first UK ads banned for negative gender stereotypes – why all the fuss?
Listening to the radio this morning and reading people’s reactions to the ASA’s decision to ban new TV ads for Philadelphia and VW has genuinely surprised me. Piers Morgan suggested that these decisions have been made by ‘woke morons,’ and ...
Read More »Sainsbury’s ad furore masks advertisers’ real problem – the growing opposition to corporate mendacity
The UK’s ASA ad regulation body is looking into Sainsbury’s Christmas effort – ‘The Big Night’ – to decide if its brief scene with a boy dressed as a plug is likely to persuade the nation’s children to plug themselves ...
Read More »Reed Smith: what the new rules on gender stereotyping mean for advertisers
By Nick Breen and Caroline O’Doherty In May this year the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) published a consultation paper outlining a proposed new rule tackling gender stereotyping in advertising. The draft rule is: “Advertisements must not include gender stereotypes ...
Read More »Gender stereotypes could finally be cause for complaint to the ASA
The Advertising Standards Authority can’t be accused of a knee-jerk response to the problem of gender stereotypes in ads. Last July it highlighted the issue in the “Depictions, Perceptions and Harm” report, and now, ten months later, it is launching ...
Read More »Reed Smith: how gender stereotyping is changing ad industry
By Nick Breen and Chloe Clift Gender stereotyping has recently become a topical issue in various industries and British society as a whole. In light of its inherently influential and persuasive nature, the advertising industry has been targeted as being ...
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