Revised Help Note on the marketing of publications

10 March 2005

The ASA upheld a complaint about this ad for a book on prostate cancer.  Click here to read the adjudication.

Regular readers of Update@CAP may recall that CAP has recently been busy updating the existing Help Note on the Marketing of Publications.  In recent times, ads for non-fiction books (especially those that refer to medical conditions) have regularly fallen foul of the CAP Code and have tended to generate large numbers of complaints to the ASA (click here to read some recent adjudications).  Complaints usually involve challenges such as whether the ads could encourage self-diagnosis or self-treatment for serious medical conditions, whether the claims were capable of being substantiated and whether they exploited vulnerable people.  CAP therefore thought the time was right to update the existing Help Note to help the industry better understand our advice on the advertising of books and other publications.  You may read the revised Help Note on the CAP website by clicking here.

The revised Help Note expands on the earlier guidance and offers lots of hopefully useful examples of claims that are likely to be acceptable and claims that are likely to fall foul of the Code.  It contains a handy list of terms that are likely to be acceptable when referring to claims that are based on the opinions of the author.  Marketers should remember, however, that claims that are capable of objective substantiation and are likely to affect the reader’s behaviour should not be featured in marketing communications for publications even when expressed as an opinion.  Ads may describe a publication’s content in discursive terms but should not simply preface an unproven claim with “we believe” or similar.

For example

“The author shares the secrets of healing with herbs that he believes can be used to drive illness away and keep it away” – likely to be unacceptable.

“In his book, the author reveals little known secrets about herbs and invites you to decide for yourself whether they could be useful in treating illness and maintaining good health” – likely to be acceptable.

The Help Note includes examples of claims that are likely to be acceptable or unacceptable when referring to serious medical conditions, using anecdotes and testimonials, using claims-in-names, claims that are likely to exploit or frighten vulnerable people and ‘guarantee’ claims.

Relevant adjudications

Rodale Books

Winchester Press

Natural Health Foundation

Windsor Health