Today the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) announced that it extend its remit to cover “marketing communications in other non-paid-for space under their control, such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter”. The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has decided to extend the digital remit of the ASA and has today published a document detailing the new remit and sanctions.
I have some serious and personal concerns about the document. In justifying the extension of its remit ASA refers to 3,500 complaints in 2008 and 2009 about the content of organisation’s websites. How does this relate to social networks or social media? Throughout the document there is constant reference to “other marketing communication” (sixteen times on 14 pages) with only a very loose definition of what constitutes “other marketing communication” suggesting that it is concerned principally with the primary intention “to sell something”. Marketing communications is so much broader than that.
The plan is to carry out a review of guidelines in 2013, two years after the implementation of the extended remit. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding and disregard for the speed of change on-line; for example in two years Twitter went from zero to 10 million tweets per day. Spotify, which is fundamentally changing the music business, is less than two years old.
There is also a contradiction in terms of definition. The guidelines exclude “press releases and other public relations material” and yet the definition of “other marketing communications” includes items that could be considered to be public relations material, for example the promotion of unsolicited (or solicited) consumer endorsement.
I would endorse all of the objectives of the CAP code with regard to the prohibition of misleading advertising, the protection of children and social responsibility. The intentions here are good there is no doubt of that. I just can’t help feeling that in regulating the social media space, bodies that concern themselves with advertising and have advertising in their title feel more than a little out-of-place.
The bulk of the PR profession needs a wake up call and fast. We have seen what is happening to print media at a regional level in the UK and US and the UK national newspaper heartland will be the next sector to feel the squeeze. Never mind the quality of the Sunday papers, feel the width. Not as bulky as they used to be are they?
Companies and brands spend millions on creativity and airtime to secure the audience and all round PR value of a TV advertising spot during the Super Bowl. In fact it was a tech company that created the craze for high concept ads in the breaks during transmission. In 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh to the world during the Super Bowl with an ad directed by Ridley Scott.
As PR communicators we need to be very careful about content. PR people have a tendency to feel that if something is published then our goals have been achieved. The ease with which things can now be published undermines that presumption. The sheer volume of web content means that a lot of the stuff that appears on the net is of little interest to anyone other than the publisher. That which has no interest will have no impact.
