Secrets of Advertising in the UK

What are the Regulatory Bodies?

They are the organizations that control the activities of companies in an industry, they have some rules that all the companies have to comply; most of the organizations are the government but also it could be a public authority.

The main Regulatory Bodies in the UK are:

1-Ofcom: is the regulator for the media and communications industries, is the T.V.regulator. Its web has information and documents, including guidelines, and material from the sites of the five defunct "legacy regulators". Ofcom is the organization that put the rules about all the T.V. programming for example the maximum of hours of a program per day. Every country has a different limit time.

Note: if you want to see the official website and you want to know all the things that Ofcom do, you can visit this website: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consumeradvice/guide/

2-Committee of Advertising Practice: The CAP is the self-regulatory body which creates, check and encourages various broadcast and non-broadcast advertising codes. The purpose of this organization is to control all the print advertising. Also the CAP writes the British Code of Advertising that all the advertisers must follow.

If you are interested to know some of these codes you can check this website that contains all of them: http://bcap.org.uk/The-Codes.aspx

3-Advertising Standards Authority: The ASA is the independent body of the advertising industry and it is the self- regulatory organization of advertising in the UK. The mission of this organization is to control or regulate the information and content of the different commercials by investigating if the commercial could be published or no, depending if the commercial complies with all the rules and regulations.

Advertisers must have facts accessible to see the claims they make about their products or services about honest advertising. Also they should take care of these specific topics: sex, sexuality, religion, race and disability.

Do you know what self regulation is? Here is a definition that will explain you what it is. “Self-Regulation it means that the industry has voluntarily established and paid for its own regulation. Advertising self-regulation is flexible in its scope and is able to adapt to market conditions.” (http://www.asa.org.uk/Regulation-Explained/Control-of-ads/Self-regulation-non-broadcast.aspx).

4-Clearcast: This organization is in charge of proving all the different commercials that will be published. They guarantee that the T.V. commercials comply with all the standards.

5-Industry publicity of the PCC:
The PCC is a regulatory body for UK printed magazines and newspapers; consisting of representatives of the principals publishers.
The service of this industry to the public has no cost, is rapidly and simple.

Do you want to know the history of this Important Company? Come on and check this website!
http://www.pcc.org.uk/about/history.html