In the wake of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launching a new Advertising Standards Code and its AdHelp service, we sit down with chief executive Hilary Souter to talk about understanding the codes, the importance of choosing the right medium and her advice for advertisers and agencies.
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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has launched its new AdHelp Information Service.
The Make New Zealand Great Again Party failed to make its advertising great again after a complaint against a sponsored Facebook post, suggesting the Labour Party was going to solve child poverty with abortion, was upheld.
Uber has been under scrutiny for its practices surrounding driver pay and licensing. Now, that anger has spilt over into its advertising, with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upholding a complaint that was made against one of its billboards.
The ASA has released the country’s most complained about ads of 2016 and unsurprisingly it was racism, encouragement of illegal behaviour and inappropriate sexual content that got New Zealanders’ blood boiling.
After choosing not to release advertising revenue figures last year, the Advertising Standards Authority has changed its methodology and released reports for 2015 and 2016 to show digital, in all forms, is where the growth is.
Being the best is a marketing paradox. Why bother with claiming your product is the greatest when you can create a much more unique position? Carlsberg and TBWA have done just that with a new campaign that tempts beer drinkers with the possibility of the best.
What is it with SUVs and superlatives? After StopPress covered SsangYong’s schooling on the use of ‘best’ by the ASA, we have another case of the absolutes.
The ASA recently upheld a complaint against Ssangyong, which advertised an SUV as the “best value”. This was found to be misleading to consumers and showed little sense of social responsibility. In light of this finding, we take a look at where Ssangyong went wrong to see when advertisers can legally describe a product as ‘the best’.
Bodies, sheep, chainsaws and cars got audiences’ blood boiling last year according to the Advertising Standards Authority.
Scott Keddie shares his surprise over the ASA’s decision to not release the 2015 advertising turn over and says the results are as valuable as ever.
The ASA will not be releasing its annual ad spend figures this year, breaking the annual tradition of providing a snapshot of how the various channels performed over the course of the year. We chat to representatives from the ASA, NZME, Bauer, ANZA, the IAB, OMANZ and Think TV about what this means.
DB and Toyota recently pulled ads in social media commenters expressing concerns that the creative was inappropriate. And while this is a nod to the effectiveness of self-regulation, it’s worrying that ASA board played no part in the decision to pull these spots.
Brands are always pissing people off whether intentionally or unintentionally. One only need look at Hell’s Pizza’s or Tui’s advertising to know that. But as that old saying goes “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”, and in light of Burgerfuel’s billboard being taken down recently, we thought we’d look into whether that’s really true. Here are a few case studies and some insights from a PR company’s perspective.
The overall ad spend pie grew by 4.2 percent to $2.39 billion in 2014, according to the Advertising Standards Authority’s figures for the 12 months ended December 31. And once again it was interactive leading the charge, overtaking newspapers and getting close to TV.
Being the one to tell people they’ve crossed the line is an unenviable responsibility at the best of times. But, despite having forged a career out of doing just that, Hilary Souter, the chief executive of the Advertising Standards Authority, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, is still smiling. So how does she keep it all together at the ASA?
In 2013, the ASA received 792 complaints levelled at 598 advertisements that Kiwis found offensive, misleading or irresponsible. 313 of these complaints were found to have no grounds to proceed while 285 were were referred to the Complaints Board. In total 60 percent of the ads that reached the Complaints Board were either settled or upheld. Here’s a rundown of the 10 ads that angered the highest number of Kiwis last year.
There are plenty of rules around the advertising of cigarettes in New Zealand. And this one breaks them all. At least it would if it was a real ad and not a joke based on a fellatio pun.
The ASA’s 2013 ad spend figures showed that while TV continues to reign supreme, its time at the top might be coming to an end as the interactive category continues its trend of strong year-on-year growth. Updated with comments from OMANZ, MediaWorks Radio and NZ post.
A complaint levelled at a Hellers TVC that features comedian Leigh Hart barbecuing on the back of a moving ute has been upheld by the ASA for not abiding by the New Zealand Road Code. In the ad, Hart, who has been the face of the Hellers since 2006, gives another one of the ludicrous barbecuing tips that have have typified the ‘Hellers BBQ masters’ campaign.
The Outdoor Media Association of New Zealand (OMANZ) today announced a fourth quarter revenue total of $18,659,878, up 1.3 percent from the same time last year. This figure brought the revenue total for 2013 to $66,455,096, which OMANZ says is a 13 percent increase from 2012.
It’s game over for Instant Kiwi’s table top advertising of its Space Invader scratchies. The Advertising Standards Authority’s Complaints Board has ruled it in breach of its Codes of Practice for promoting a gambling product appealing to minors.
Peter Nuttall thinks New Zealand is playing a game of risk with its 100% Pure brand and believes it is bordering on greenwash. Wayne Linklater explains.
Tampons are difficult to advertise without offending some people. The Advertising Standards Authority’s 2012 annual report shows two feminine hygiene products in its top ten most complained about ads list for last year.
Hakanoa Ginger Beer and M&C Saatchi got into a bit of PR strife a few months back after a campaign asking for parents to swap their red-haired kids for a six pack of ginger beer received a public scalding. After the public response—and despite claims about it being an attempt to raise awareness of the discrimination of ginger haired children—the campaign was pulled early. But the Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint about it, saying the posters were socially irresponsible and discriminatory.
Moa has its fair share of detractors, from threat-making Pakistanis to protective Frenchies to lesbians to those who disagreed with the imagery used in its, shall we say, unique prospectus. So it came as a shock to many when the trickster god of the Kiwi beer family was announced as a sponsor of the New Zealand Olympic team, a sponsorship we felt it did a fantastic job of leveraging online and in person at Kiwi house in London. And as part of its ‘Beer for Olympians’ campaign, it has had one complaint upheld and one not upheld by the ASA.
When the Australian Standards Bureau ruled that user generated content on Carlton United Breweries Facebook page could be classified as advertising and was therefore subject to the same criteria as any other ad, advertisers and advocates smacked their gobs and quivered in their boots because they felt on-the-fly moderation required to deal with comments was commercially impractical and would nullify the immediacy and openness that make social media so powerful. Now the Advertising Standards Authority in New Zealand has released its views on the matter, and while it doesn’t go quite as far as its neighbours, there are some interesting rulings that affect how brands interact with consumers online.
Around one year ago, Mi9’s Dan Robertson put his hand up to be a representative of the ‘dark side’ on the ASA complaints board. To his surprise, that label turned out to be bang on, with advertising that would in most cases generate complaints in other mediums often flying imperiously online. And, as online advertising takes a bigger slice of the pie, he thinks that needs to change.
Stories about ASA complaints that weren’t upheld are generally the marcomms equivalent of ‘there was no accident on the bridge today’. But in the case of an advertisement for Carefree Acti-Fresh Panty Liners, otherwise known as vagina discharge-gate, we’ll make an exception, because none of the 18 complaints received will get to have their day in court.
From ‘it’s not the drinking, it’s how we’re drinking’ to the ‘ghost chips’ legends, our collective love for the bottle has been referenced in advertising far too many times to count. Now a billboard for Radio Hauraki’s ‘Drive’ show that normalises drinking has fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Authority, but the same ad placed in the New Zealand Herald was deemed acceptable.