ASA remit

Re: ASA remit

It's self regulation: link to CAP website. An interesting little set-up. I can see where Lord Leveson looked for some of his ideas on press regulation, as well as some similarities with the old (discredited) press regulation systems.

It looks like the ultimate sanction is having your right to advertise taken away or at least severely curtailed. Mostly companies just get told not to run the ad again. But if you persistently offend they can get the advertising networks to refuse to take your ads (as they have a duty to make reasonable efforts not to air stuff that breaks the code). After repeated tellings off they can make you have all your ads pre-checked for compliance, backed by the same threat (as happened to FCUK a while back - the company what can't spell fuck). I'd imagine it's after that you get the plug pulled. If the advertising space sellers don't co-operate, and it makes enough noise, they might get full regulation, so they've an incentive to cooperate. Plus the ASA can refer to the OFT who can go to court, so there is a legal backstop.

Of course it's still self-regulation. It applies to pretty much all advertising, and marketing / sales promotions. Although it says that where things are unclear they will have a bias towards ruling on paid-for advertising space, which I guess means they'd be less likely to rule on a company's own website.

Anyway Brewdog could probably ignore it. This is self regulation. If the ASA felt sufficiently pissed off, they could ban them from mainstream advertising providers. If they don't market using those channels, then they might not care. I suspect they'd have to be a lot naughtier than this in order to get any serious sanctions - they're not high profile.

As for the Daily Fail, the code applies to advertising, marketing and sales campaigns. I'm sure their online ads are regulated, the same as the ones that go in the paper - and will mostly comply. The ASA don't have jurisdiction over the articles.

Although they do have the power to rule on 'advertorial' type content. Which could be interesting, given that 90% of the travel and fashion plus half the technology coverage in papers seems to be barely more than thinly disguised adverts.