Advertising Standards Agency

What is the ASAThe Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the self-regulatory organisation (SRO) of the advertising industry in the United Kingdom. The ASA is a non-statutory organisation and so cannot interpret or enforce legislation. However, its code of advertising practice broadly reflects legislation in many instances. The ASA is not funded by the British Government, but by a levy on the advertising industry.
Its role is to "regulate the content of advertisements, sales promotions and direct marketing in the UK" by investigating "complaints made about ads, sales promotions or direct marketing", and deciding whether such advertising complies with its advertising standards codes. These codes stipulate that "before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove all claims, whether direct or implied, that are capable of objective substantiation" and that "no marketing communication should mislead, or be likely to mislead, by inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, omission or otherwise"

What code does the ASA use in it's judgement? used
BCAP is responsible for writing and maintaining The UK Code of Broadcast Advertising.
CAP is responsible for the rulebook The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotions and Direct Marketing. Non-broadcast means ads in media such as cinema, press, posters and online.

what new area does the ASA cover from March this year?
The ASA is the UK's independent regulator of advertising across all media, including, from 1 March, marketing on websites. We work to ensure ads are legal, decent, honest and truthful by applying the Advertising Codes.

Write about an example of an ASA decision on a complaint.
Ad
A TV ad, for Deep Relief pain relief gel, featured a woman diving into a swimming pool, which, the further down she swam, turned into the seabed. A voice-over stated "Two way action Deep Relief gel contains prescription strength ibuprofen and soothing levomenthol, which work to reduce inflammation and give effective deep relief from rheumatic and muscular pain. Go deeper and discover the effective two way action of Deep Relief gel."

Issue
DDD Ltd challenged whether the claims:

1. "prescription strength ibuprofen" was misleading and could be substantiated; and

2. "go deeper" misleadingly implied that the product could go deeper into tissue than other similar products.

BCAP TV Code
5.1.15.1.35.2.15.2.25.4.6
Response
Mentholatum said they received written approval from both the Proprietary Association of Great Britain (PAGB) and Clearcast prior to the broadcast of the ad, and believed that it complied with all relevant regulations.

1. Mentholatum said 5% ibuprofen gels were routinely prescribed by UK doctors to their patients, and understood that 5% ibuprofen gel prescriptions outnumbered those of 10% strength by approximately two to one.

Clearcast said they consulted one of their consultant physicians who confirmed that ibuprofen was available as a prescription medicine in two strengths - 5% and 10%. They said they therefore approved the claim.

2. Mentholatum said the claim "Go deeper" aimed to highlight Deep Relief's delivery mechanism of skin penetration by ibuprofen. They said it was a pun based on the approved product name, Deep Relief. They said "Go deeper" was deliberately separated from the product name in order to emphasise that, in the context of a woman swimming to the bottom of the sea, it was a call to action for consumers to search out another possible treatment for their pain.

Clearcast said the claim was based on one of the products ingredients, levomenthol, which was a rubefacient. They explained that rubefacients were counter irritants and 'deep seated' pain could be relieved by any method which itself produced irritation of the skin. They said their consultant believed that, because the product dealt with deep seated pain, the claim was justified. Clearcast believed that the verbal and visual pun of a woman swimming to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve the product was acceptable on the basis that Deep Relief would be able to treat deep seated pain differently to a product that did not contain a rubefacient.

Three Shoe Ads Comparison Exercise

Evaluation
• How does your finished product compare to your design?
My finished front cover is very different from my original block design. I attempted to follow the block design but as I built up the front cover, it didn’t look like an average teenage magazine, it also didn’t follow the right conventions. I adapted it to try and follow the conventions, and changed it vastly and then decided to follow the Teen Vogue style. Which worked well, so this gave me my final front cover design.
• How has technology (computer, digital, camera, printer) helped you turn your design into a real product?
Technology has helped me vastly throughout this product. The Internet has helped me research what normal, everyday teenage magazines and help adapt it in to my design. Photoshop has given me vast amounts of help e.g. different font styles, the choice of whether to make pictures seem like Polaroid pictures etc. I took the main image at my 16th birthday party, and as I looked through my pictures to find one for my media cover, I can across this one and realised that this one would look good on the front.
• Do you feel that your product is suitable for target audience?
I think my product is suitable for the target audience. The target audience of my product is teenagers, so I studied current teenager magazine covers such as Mizz, Teen Vogue and Shout. I used these as a guide to how to present mine, in a way that teenagers would like, and relate to. This is how I ended up with my final product.
• Describe two challenges you have overcome.
I have thought of different magazine names and different headings for my magazine and I have also had to move things around as in certain positions it didn't look right so I had to move them to improve my overall mark.
• Describe the technical skills you have gained.
I have learnt how to experiment with different effects, for example, shadows and bevels, and tools such as the magic wand and layer changing within Photoshop to see what works and what doesn’t, this helps develop my understanding of building magazine covers. I experimented with vast amounts of shadows and bevels for my title and the pugs to see what looked best and to see what didn’t work. This helped me a lot. I also used the magic wand to select the parts of the images that I wanted and that I didn’t want to make the cover look better.

ACORN (acronym for A Classification Of Residential Neighbourhoods) is a geodemographic information system categorising all United Kingdom postcodes into various types based upon census data and other information such as lifestyle surveys. It was developed by Richard Webber of CACI Limited, who also developed the competing MOSAIC system, and is sold to businesses, health and local authorities typically for marketing and planning purposes.

questionnaire

jess media questionnaire

Sixteen, Jess Curtis' Media Cover