Friday 12 December 2008

Why do companies use illegal advertising?

Just discovered my uni dissertation looking at why companies use illegal advertising and thought it worth putting online.

Please reference me if you need to use any of it; however it has references throughout so you can probably just go back to the source material. It's also written in 2003 so horribly out of date.
 Executive summary
“Last year, the Advertising Standards Authority dealt with complaints about a record number of advertisements. Over 13,000 people wrote to the Authority about advertisements.”
(Source: "Legal, decent, honest and truthful" an introduction on a booking form for a CIM lecture on 8th May 2002. Chartered Institute of Marketing Scotland.)
This project asked the question why is it necessary for companies to act in such a way when the very people they are trying to reach are the people who are complaining about what they are doing?

Some of the most memorable adverts of recent years include an Opium poster campaign that was banned for being offensive and degrading to women.

Opium perfume advert with a naked Sophie Dahl
(Image source - BRIERLEY, S. (2002) The Advertising Handbook, 2nd.ed. London: Routledge. p.221 figure 14.3 © Yves Saint Laurent: Steve Miese)

Despite being banned, the advert created “an enormous amount of extra publicity for the Opium brand.” This project discovered whether illegal advertising such as the Opium advert is necessary to both the public and the advertising industry. Within this was considered the role of the self-regulatory authorities and how their roles and the powers available to them need to change.

Ethics was closely considered within advertising campaigns and the extent to which ethics must figure in every company’s communications.

The specific example of the tobacco industry was also considered who are no longer able to advertise and solutions to this problem and the validity of this restriction discovered.

Related posts
Globalisation within construction - CIM PGDip Emerging Themes Assignement (Aug 2011)

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