The One-stop ASA Shop: how tough it really was on complaints on broadcast ads in the first quarter of 2005

07 June 2005

Advertiser and broadcasters can have confidence in the ASA ‘one-stop shop’ Director General Christopher Graham told the Marketing Week TV 2005 conference of senior advertisers and TV ad sales people held in Paris in May.  He was giving a presentation on the theme ‘The Future Face of Advertising Regulation’ just six months after the inauguration of the new system under which the ASA, under contract from Ofcom, rules on complaints about TV and radio ads.

”We may be the new kids on the block; but we are not out to prove how tough we can be” Mr Graham said.  ‘”The record shows that we are neither tougher nor more lenient than either Ofcom or the ITC before them.”

Mr Graham compared the percentage of complaints upheld by the ASA in the first quarter of 2005 with that in the same period in the previous two years – 2004 under Ofcom and 2003 under the ITC.  He said official complaint levels were higher with the ASA in charge but people had always complained to the ASA about TV ads – even before the ASA had responsibility for broadcast advertising.  ”The only difference now is that those complaints get counted” Mr Graham said.

Mr Graham stressed that the TV Advertising Standards Code and the Radio Advertising Standards Code were the same codes that Ofcom had contracted-out to the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) last November.  BCAP could change the codes only with the agreement of Ofcom and after public consultation.  Pre-clearance by the BACC and the RACC continued and the ASA and both clearance centres were working closely together to avoid shocks to the system.

Mr Graham said the main benefit of the ‘one-stop shop’ was the encouragement of consistency of decision-making across media.

Broadcast Complaints received