ASA

Advertising Standards Authority

The advertising standards authority -ASA- is the independent regulator of advertising in the UK. They apply advertising codes cross all media, these are written by Committees of Advertising Practice. As a company they ensure that advertisements are not misleading, offensive, harmful or prejudice and act upon complaints.

The ASA is an independent body set up by the advertising industry. They also self regulate and practice BCAP (set of codes that tell an advertiser what they can and cannot do in an advert)

I think…

i don’t think the ASA can be fair in regulating advertisements. They claim to make sure averts are not misleading and offensive however it is not possible for them to look at an advert from everyones point of view because everyone has different opinions of what is offensive to them personally! They don’t respond to the bulk of complaints because of the nature of them, so what difference do they make?

The ASA say that they can ‘assure sales promotions are ran fairly’ however i don’t think they can do this if they are self regulating because they have the power to ignore there own mistakes.

They also claim to ‘reduce unwanted commercial mail either end through the post or by email and text’ however they can not stop commercial mail being sent from other countries so honestly i don’t see the point !

BCAP

The BCAP code is the UK code of broadcast advertising. The codes are kept up to date and are enforced by the advertising standards authority who can take steps to remove and/or amend any adverts that breach the rules. The code is made up of 147 pages and can be downloaded from the ASA website and is structured in categories of genre of adverts.

Within each section there is:

• Pinciple
• Background
• Definitions
• Rules

The codes are easy to follow and clearly state rules for companies to follow.

e.g of code