Brussels, 14th May: the global marketing communications industry has committed to strengthening global advertising self-regulation following meetings held during the Global Advertising Summit in Toronto from April 25th. On a bi-annual basis, the summit brings together industry leaders from advertisers, agencies, the media and other stakeholders with marketing interests to address common challenges to the global marketing communications industry.

 

The commitment to responsible advertising comes at a time when marketing communications have an increasingly cross-border dimension and emerging economies are becoming fast-growing advertising markets. The initial focus will involve reinforcing advertising self-regulatory mechanisms to ensure the highest level of responsible marketing communications in key emerging markets, including Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Russia.

 

“Effective advertising self-regulation plays a critical role in ensuring responsible marketing communications and consumer trust in many countries,” said Stephan Loerke, Managing Director of the World Federation of Advertisers. “At a time when new technologies and new markets are driving significant changes in our industry, we need to ensure effective advertising self-regulation exists in all markets.”

 

Strengthening advertising self-regulatory processes in these markets will involve a range of measures, including:

-          greater consumer awareness about the self-regulatory system, how it works and how consumers can complain about advertisements;

-          improved processes for fast complaint handling to ensure advertisements in breach of the codes of conduct are quickly retracted;

-          transparent adjudication processes, with decisions published to act as a disincentive for non-compliance;

-          non-industry involvement in the self-regulatory process to ensure outward credibility and increased trust in the system;

-          codes of conduct which are sensitive to societal concerns and apply to all forms of marketing communications.

 

The overriding conclusion from the summit was that consumers worldwide should be entitled to an easily accessible, free and responsive advertising complaints mechanism. This was deemed essential in order to maintain consumer confidence at a time when there is a rapid increase of marketing communications spend in emerging markets and in new media platforms, such as the Internet.

 

Bernhard Glock, WFA President and Vice-President, Global Media and Communication, P&G concluded the summit, “Society and regulators rightly demand that business assumes its responsibilities. The marketing communications industry is clearly committed to funding and implementing effective advertising self-regulation worldwide. It is critical for global consumer confidence in our industry.”

 

WFA has convened a specific task force bringing together industry leaders, including the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the International Advertising Association (IAA) and the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) for their experience of establishing self-regulatory organisations in Central and Eastern Europe. The group will seek to draw up a roadmap for rolling out effective advertising self-regulation in the markets identified.

 

While these international organisations will help oversee the implementation to share best practice and ensure a degree of coherence, national task forces will be set up involving key local players to ensure that the self-regulatory process is adapted and tailored according to local contexts and sensitivities.

 

For all press enquiries, please contact Malte Lohan at m.lohan@wfanet.org or call +32 (0)2 502 57 40 or +32 476 509 054