Advertising standards body draws up rules for e-cigarettes, gambling and health claims

New rules for e-cigarette and gambling advertisements and tighter restrictions on the claims that can be made by food companies and health practitioners have been introduced by the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI).

E-cigarette manufacturers will be told they cannot make health or medicinal claims and they should not associate the product with tobacco brands or products or glamorise tobacco in any way.

E-cigarettes may be presented as an alternative to tobacco, according to the code, but advertisers should do nothing to undermine the message that quitting tobacco use is the best option for good health. Advertisments should also not encourage nonsmokers or non-nicotine- users to use e-cigarettes.

Gambling companies, meanwhile, will be told they cannot suggest in their marketing that gambling “can provide an escape from personal, professional or educational problems such as loneliness or depression”. Gambling should also not be protrayed as a solution to financial problems or a substitution for earning an income, and nor can advertisements imply that gambling is a “rite of passage”.

E-cigarette and gambling advertisements are both already covered by the ASAI’s general rules, but the self-regulatory body has decided to draw up specific sections in its code for the as they now have “increased visibility”, says Orla Twomey, assistant chief executive at the authority.

“They are areas of societal concern, and we felt it would be timely to introduce specific rules for them,” says Twomey.

Minister for Communications Alex White will launch the seventh edition of the ASAI’s code of standards for advertising, promotional and direct marketing today, following a consultation process that attracted about 50 responses.

The first principle remains that marketing communications should be “legal, decent, honest and truthful. They should contain nothing that is likely to cause grave or widespread offence – not in the name of humour or satire or any other purpose”.

One of the grounds on which advertisements should not cause offence is gender, and the ASAI has now updated its definition of gender to cover “people who have a gender identity different to the gender assigned at birth and those people who wish to portray their gender identity in a different way to the gender assigned at birth”.

This follows the ASAI’s upholding in early 2013 of complaints against a television ad for mobile brand Meteor that implied a man would dance with a drag queen only out of desperation. Telecoms group Three was also recently criticised for a billboard advertisement that used the line: “Sorry Vodafone customers, it turned out he was a she, after you’d used all your data.”

Elsewhere in the revised code, food companies have been reminded that they cannot make nutrition or health claims about their food unless they comply with the European Union register of claims. This will give small and medium-sized food companies “more clarity” about what is permitted in their communications, Twomey says. “The bigger brands tend to have a wealth of in-house expertise.”

Food companies will be told they cannot advertise promotional offers to preschool and primary school children, while promotional offers aimed at older children should not encourage excess consumption.

The use of third-party licensed characters, celebrities and movie tie-ins to market to children is also against the ASAI rules – many of the larger food groups have already signed up to a EU pledge on this, though company-owned, “brand equity” characters are still permitted.

Advertisements for health services that claim to treat serious medical conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease or depression will be deemed in breach of the ASAI code unless the service is provided by a suitably qualified health professional.

Health advertising “shouldn’t imply that a medical consultation is not necessary”, nor should they cause fear or distress to people who do not avail of the product or service being advertised – the one exception to this rule is a vaccination campaign approved by the Minister for Health.

The ASAI is funded by the advertising industry and its usual sanction is to oblige advertisers to withdraw ads that are in breach of its code. In 2014, it received 1,384 formal complaints, some of which were outside its remit. Some 92 advertisements were found to be in breach of its code by the complaints committee: Two-thirds of these were found to be misleading, and a quarter were held to be offensive.

The bad news for purveyors of the “sorry if we caused offence” excuse is that it is not the intention of the advertiser that is examined by the complaints committee, but the ad itself.

The phenomenon of a small number of objections snowballing into a complaints avalanche, perhaps in the aftermath of a social media campaign against an ad, has not been a significant one for the body.

“We haven’t had a lot of experience of that,” says Twomey.

The ASAI will investigate an advertisement on the basis of a single complaint, she adds, but the volume of complaints may make a difference in some cases.

“Obviously in taste and decency complaints, numbers can be important, because it is evidence that this has caused widespread offence.”