Advertisements need to be regulated, there are two main bodies that deal with doing so , these are the ASA and OFCOM. The ASA is the Advertising Standards Agency. The regulation of advertisements is important as there are many adverts that have caused offence to the public audience, whether it be through ;religion,gender, sexuality or any other topic. Therefore the regulation determines whether the advert is fine to be published and doesn't offend anyone. The role of the ASA is to be a regulator for advert by sticking to the UK Advertising Codes. The role of OFCOM is similar to ASA as they also regulate some adverts, however they monitor the communications of the advert.
The certain areas that the ASA look at particularly in adverts are to take action against, misleading, harmful or offensive advertisements. The ASA asks two particular questions about advertisements, these are is it offensive and is the advert telling the truth. The ASA decides whether is the advert is appropriate through a number of things. Audience feedback is a method they may use to see if the audience is offended by the advert or if they think there is anything good with the advert, also they have a council within the asa that decides whether the advert is appropriate.
There have been many cases where an advert has caused much controversy and raises many important issues. The first advert that does so that i am going to talk about is an smoking advert from the brand 'craven'. This was a controversial advert as it promoting smoking as a healthy thing as in the picture it shows that the women is very sporty and implies that smoking will help you do this, whereas this is not true as smoking has been proven to be unhealthy for you and gives you more chance of getting lung cancer. Also it portrays that smoking iis fun as in the photo the women is very happy about smoking and is doing it freely to show everyone and makes it seem as it makes her happy. If this advert was published in the modern society it would be baneed as it is not telling the truth and doesn't display the right image or informstion about what smoking does to the body, this is also why their signs of cigarette boxes saying how much they can cause damage.
Another advertisement that caused alot of controversy on important issue is a Malteser advert from 1950, this portrayed maltesers as a healthy light-weight snack, this is proven as in the ad it says ' it's the chocolate that can help you stay slim' , also in a more recent advert it says that ' less than 11 calories each' , this gives off the suggestion that the maltesers are a very low energy food, however this is not the case and was banned due to misleading the customers into believing thaa Maltesers were a good light-weight healthy choice snack.
The final advertisement that caused a lot of controversy was the paddy power advert , this caused controversy as it may come across as animal cruelty as it is seen as a cat being kicked which would offend someone. Also not may give offence to blind people as in the advert it is blind football hand a cat runs onto the pitch who has a collar that has a bell on it lie the football and may perceive the blind people to be un-intelligent.
