The Financial Times reported on October 24 that in-store TV adverts promoting responsible drinking will be shown in Tesco stores over the Christmas season. Dan Jago, Tesco’s category director for wine, beer and spirits, was quoted in the newspaper as saying: “We’ve got to tell people that being drunk isn’t cool.” But, Tesco told Briefing that such an ad campaign is “speculation” and that “there is nothing confirmed in relation to any kind of Tesco Christmas ad campaign”. Retailers, along with bars and pubs, are under pressure from the government to help prevent binge drinking. Brewer Scottish & Newcastle told the Competition Commission in July that supermarkets were not doing enough to promote responsible drinking. The UK trails only slightly behind Ireland and Finland when it comes to binge drinking. Briton’s binge an average of 28 times a year according to the Institute for Alcohol Studies.
Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, announced on November 17 a total ban on advertising food and drinks with high sugar, fat and salt content on children’s television, while extending the ban to include programmes that have a “particular appeal” to under 16 year olds. Ofcom said it wants to ensure the “protection of the under-16s as opposed to the under-9s as first proposed”.
Ofcom set a deadline of March 2007 for advertisers to alter their marketing campaigns in line with the new restrictions on junk food advertising to under-16s. However, advertising restrictions will be phased in over 24 months up until the end of 2008 for dedicated children’s channels where the “ability to substitute revenues from food and drink advertising would be more difficult to achieve quickly”. Ofcom estimated the impact on total broadcast revenues would be up to £39m a year, with commercial broadcasters including ITV and GMTV losing up to 0.7% of their total revenues. Children’s and youth-oriented cable and satellite channels could lose up to 8.8% of their total revenues, with the figure rising to 15% in the case of dedicated children’s channels.
Contact; The Office of Communications 020 7981 3000 www.ofcom.org.uk
Green gloss
Companies that claim to have green credentials will have to prove them from now on. The Advertising Standards Authority has said that it will not tolerate ‘green’ claims by companies unless it is backed up “with sound evidence”. ASA describes such claims as a “strong selling point with consumers” and points out that that British code of advertising, sales promotion and direct marketing demands that all environmental claims made have to be backed up by the science.
Scottish & Southern Energy has recently been ordered by ASA to stop using a leaflet that claimed that a tree-planting scheme linked to its green tariff would absorb as much carbon dioxide as that created by the households signed up to the tariff. Other similar adjudications were made against Good Energy and News International for statements made about renewable energy and the fuel efficiency of products.
Contact; The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) 020 7492 2222 www.asa.org.uk
Toyland
Wal-Mart has been criticised for the launch of its Christmas advertising campaign aimed at children. The advert is one of the first online campaigns aimed only at children and features two elves which direct children to pick their ‘wish list’ of toys for Christmas online and then email the list to their parents. Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, a coalition of teachers, parents, advocacy groups and health care experts that tries to counter the effects of marketing to children, says that Wal-Mart is “interposing itself between parents and children, and actively encouraging kids to nag for their products” and that “there is no sense of what that parent can afford or of the parent’s own values”. No parental consent is needed for the children to submit email addresses.
The advertising industry will no longer be allowed to make claims about the ethical nature of products without evidence to back up the claims. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has revised its International Code of Advertising Practice. In particular the code now specifies that any scientific claims made in advertising and marketing must be backed up by “unequivocal research” and the data must be made available for review. It also includes new chapters on electronic media, green advertising claims and has expanded its section on advertising to children. This is the eighth time the code has been revised since it was first issued in 1937.
Contact; Manuela van der Laan, Commission on Marketing and Advertising, ICC 0033 1 49 53 28 07 www.iccwbo.org
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