ASA launches campaign in Scotland to promote decent and honest ads
The Advertising Standards Authority, ASA, has launched a brand new advertising campaign in Scotland to promote its role in helping to keep all ads ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’.
The campaign has been developed in partnership with the Advertising Association’s (AA) Trust Working Group and features creative by The Leith Agency starring famous brands including Audi, Churchill, Marmite, IRN-BRU, Mastercard, and Tesco, all generously supported with donated media space.
The new campaign takes famous advertising campaigns for brands and interprets them in a fresh take to remind the public that all ads are fully regulated. Straplines such as Churchill’s OOoh Yes, Mastercard’s Priceless and Marmite’s Love it or hate it will feature in print, outdoor, and online ads, while two TV 10 second and 20 second ads will feature Churchill and Marmite.
It will run as a national campaign across TV (STV, C4 Scotland, Sky), Radio (Global & Bauer Media stations), Print (All Scottish National titles), Outdoor (Global Outdoor, JC Decaux, Clear Channel), Social (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok) and Online Display in activity planned by Mediacom.
Guy Parker, Chief Executive, Advertising Standards Authority: “Our new ad campaign will help raise awareness of the ASA’s vital role regulating advertising, crucially including online, by playing around with, and celebrating, famous UK ads. The collaborative approach to our new ad campaign clearly shows the support for effective advertising self-regulation. And so we are immensely grateful to the AA, Leith and Mediacom for helping us to create and plan the campaign pro bono, and to the many media owners and platforms who have so kindly donated space and airtime.”
To help gauge the success of the campaign in raising awareness of and trust in the ASA, and by extension trust in advertising, the Authority conducted pre-campaign research on over 1,000 people over the age of 16 in both Scotland and the rest of the UK.
Figures showed that trust in the ad industry across the UK (17 per cent) and trust in ads (23 per cent) is lower. Results for Scotland were broadly comparable, with Scottish people being slightly more trusting.
Stephen Woodford, Chief Executive, Advertising Association: “We know that strong awareness of the ASA as an effective regulator of advertising content correlates with public trust in advertising and this campaign demonstrates the breadth of the ASA’s remit across all media. Our thanks must go to the brilliant efforts of the teams at Leith, Mediacom and all our media owner partners. The creative idea harnesses the power of some of Britain’s best-loved campaigns and is a tremendous demonstration of the industry support for our world-class self-regulatory system in the ASA and the creative strengths of the Scottish ad industry. We all have an interest in rebuilding public trust in advertising and I’m sure this campaign will play a key role in moving us forward in the right, positive direction.”
However, the research found that trust in the ASA is crucial to driving trust in the ad industry. 22 per cent of people across the UK who trust the ASA trust the ad industry, versus 17 per cent who don’t. In Scotland, a higher 27 per cent of people who trust the ASA trust the ad industry, versus 20% who don’t.
The Authority said it would undertake post-campaign research in order to measure the impact of the campaign on awareness and trust amongst Scottish people versus the rest of the UK.
Brian Coane, Client Partner, Leith: "Thanks to the support of some of Britain's leading brands we've been able to create a campaign that features the ads the public love as well as reminding them the ASA is there for them, to make sure all UK ads stick to the rules. The creative team, Jim Swan and Sam Muir, did an excellent job in finding a way to develop the campaign with humour to engage viewers while making sure the message that the ASA regulates all ads including online and social media is clear.”
