Food and soft drink advertisers seem to have digested the new rules

26 February 2008

In 2007, new content rules for food and soft drink product advertisements were introduced in BCAP’s TV Code (February), BCAP’s Radio Code (September) and the non-broadcast CAP Code (July).  The new rules, designed to help protect children’s health, recognised and responded to public concern about rising levels of childhood obesity.

Our Compliance team has just published a survey into food and soft drink product advertising in the wake of those new rules.  The objectives of the survey were to assess compliance rates, ensure a level playing field for marketers, identify problems and bring them to the attention of the ASA or CAP.  The survey reported a compliance rate of 99% - in fact, 100% with the food and soft drink new clauses - which shows that advertisers and agencies took note of the rules and understood their relevance and importance.

The survey looked at 759 different non-broadcast, online and TV advertisements that appeared in July 2007.  Only two of 292 television advertisements breached the BCAP TV Code (0.7%) and only four of 467 non-broadcast advertisements breached the CAP Code (0.9%).  The total breach rate was only 0.8%.  The results of the survey are extremely encouraging and suggest that no main problems exist.

The Compliance team will continue to monitor the media and work with publishers, the RACC and Clearcast to ensure that that high level of compliance is maintained and that the vast majority of food and soft drink advertisements continue to comply with the CAP and BCAP Codes.   Click here to read the Compliance Report in full