No swearing around the kids, and less sexualised images in ads are common trends the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) is hearing from the community when it comes to complaints around advertising.
The industry watchdog recently looked back at its history to compile the book “Irk, eek, oh! & Really?: 40 years of self-regulation meeting community standards in advertising” for its 40-year anniversary.
ASB CEO Fiona Jolly told AdNews that it was very clear that each decade has been marked by certain issues around advertising, but said the one thing the board is seeing now is a shift towards conservatism in language and sex in particular.
“In the 80s the issue was cigarette advertising, in the 90s motor vehicle advertising was very problematic, so things tend to be fairly the same every year,” Jolly said.
“Concern about sex and sexualised images is the most complained about issue every year and our latest research found that the community was becoming a bit more conservative on language issues, particularly around children.
“So the board has had to become a bit stricter on language issues, particularly around outdoor advertising and radio at different times, which is really surprising.”
Where Jolly said the issue often arises is complaints against “bad taste”. These complaints are usually considered by the board under the broad “other” category, but often dismissed as they tend to not breach a section of the code. In 2014, “other” accounted by 16.6% of complaints.
The most complained about ad of last year, for extra-martial dating site Ashley Madison, was dismissed by the board as it did not breach any rules of the code, showing how ads that offend sensibilities often aren't doing anything wrong.
“It's a bit of a hard line and quite often something will got other board and you think 'well they've raised a valid complaint but we're pretty sure the board will say it's fine',” Jolly said.
“However, they’ve taken the time to raise the complaint and we have to consider it.”
Jolly said changing community standards show the benefit of the self-regulation approach that the ASB takes to monitor the industry. She said in the case of images of women in advertising, community feedback was able to be passed to the AANA – which writes the advertising codes – and a new clause was able to be added.
“It is a much better approach to community standards than the alternative , which is a government regulated scheme,” Jolly said.
“It would be much more expensive, slower and much less nimble when it comes to responding to changes.'
“Self regulation only works with the support of the industry it is trying to look after and there is no question that this system only works because advertisers support it both financially and in terms of compliance.”
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