Advertisers make great strides towards self-regulation

Dubai: Advertisers have made great strides towards self-regulation, and as a result they are reducing the need for strict controls on the industry, IAA delegates have heard.

Delegates at the 40th IAA World Congress were told that advertisers were taking on board the corporate social responsibility agenda, particularly when it came to the advertising of food products.

In a panel discussion titled The Advertising Environment: Responsible Marketing, Regulation and Self Regulation, Carla Michelotti of the American Advertising Association said: "There is more that responsible advertisers are doing and it should be recognised."

She condemned bans on certain adverts as "misguided attempts to solve societal issues" that failed to achieve anything.

In Sweden, for example, she said, a ban on food advertisements that targeted children did not lead to a reduction in the number of obese youngsters.

"Today, food advertisers are doing many things voluntarily to influence obesity issues and it often incorporates messages about exercise and having a balanced diet. There are many wonderful examples," she said.

Jacques Bille, the IAA's Vice-President for European Union affairs, said the industry still faced "the challenge" of external regulation, but added that it was largely coping with this through self-regulation.

"We have made real progress in self regulation in the EU in the past two years. It's rather good and it's rather positive.

"We have reinforced self regulation where it existed and we've established it where it was absent," he said.

He added that this trend towards self-regulation has encouraged deregulation in the European advertising market as the authorities including the European Commission realise that the industry is now capable of policing itself.

"We act as a responsible industry and we have a legal framework we can accept," he said.

However, fellow panellist Douglas Wood from the Association of National Advertisers struck a less optimistic note, warning that some companies in the United States have been hit by heavy lawsuits from those unhappy about their advertising.

For example, McDonald's which earlier in the session Michelotti praised for its advertisements promoting exercise had to pay out millions of dollars last year after complaints that it had not taken out certain types of fats from its foods as quickly as it promised to.

He added: "Next time you try to run an add that's very creative, if it's got anything that could, according to the lowest common denominator, be seen as indecent, you could have a very hard time getting it aired in the United States."