The guidelines cover advertising over the internet, through
on-line and interactive services, and electronic communication
networks including the telephone,
SMS
/
MMS
, digital radio and television.
They have been updated in light of technical advances in the market
since 1998, when they were last amended.
The guidelines, prepared by the
ICC
Commission on
Marketing and Advertising, aim to:
- increase public confidence that marketing and advertising
material provided over the new interactive systems is legal, decent
and honest;
- safeguard an optimum of freedom of expression for advertisers
and marketers;
- provide practical and flexible solutions;
- minimise the need for governmental and/or inter-governmental
legislation or regulations;
- meet reasonable consumer privacy expectations.
Contents include:
- responsible advertising to children;
- respect for public groups;
- data collection;
- unsolicited commercial communications; and
- respect for the potential sensitivities of a global
audience.
"The guidelines demonstrate the responsiveness of
ICC
to stay current with the fast-changing area of the
electronic media," said John Manfredi, Chair of the ICC Commission
on Marketing and Advertising and Senior Vice President of Corporate
Affairs at The Gillette Company.
Oliver Gray, Chair of
ICC
's Task Force on Code
Revision and Director-General of the European Advertising Standards
Alliance (
EASA
), added, "There should be no need to
have more than light touch regulation in this area of responsible
advertising."
"We believe that the new guidelines clearly explain how
interactive services, such as those currently being reviewed in
EU
discussions on the possible revision of the
Television without Frontiers Directive, are responsibly addressed
by industry self-regulation," he said.
But unlike the
UK
's Privacy and Electronic
Communications Regulations, which came into force in 2003 in
implementation of an earlier
EU
Directive, the
ICC
's guidelines do not require that marketers have
specific consent from consumers before they send unsolicited
marketing, or spam, to those consumers via electronic media.
According to the guidelines:
"Advertisers/marketers who send unsolicited marketing and
advertising messages via electronic media should have reasonable
grounds to believe that the consumers who receive such messages
will have an interest in the subject matter or offer."
UK
marketers should also follow the CAP Code, a set
of industry rules applied by industry watchdog the Advertising
Standards Authority (
ASA
). Again, these rules, which
also require consent, are tighter than those put forward by the
ICC
.
Louise Townsend, a specialist in data protection law with
Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said:
"Organisations that are already complying with the Privacy
Regulations and the CAP Code should not have difficulty complying
with the ICC Guidelines, particularly as they do not require
consent to electronic marketing. Reputable organisations outside
the EU may however wish to adhere to them to alleviate privacy
concerns."
