The Advertising Association promotes the role and rights of responsible advertising and its value to people, society, businesses and the economy. We represent UK advertisers, agencies, media owners and tech companies on behalf of the entire industry, acting as the connection between industry professionals and the politicians and policy-makers.

The Advertising Association focuses on major industry and policy areas that have huge ramifications on UK advertising. This section contains our work around public health, gambling advertising, data and e-privacy, trust, the digital economy and more.

Credos is the advertising industry’s independent think tank. It produces research, evidence and reports into the impact and effectiveness of and public and political response to advertising on behalf of UK advertisers in order to enable the industry to make informed decisions.

Front Foot is our industry’s member network of over 90 businesses across UK advertising. It aims to promote the role of responsible advertising and its value to people, society and the economy through a coalition of senior leaders from advertisers, agencies and media owners.

We run a number of events throughout the year, from our annual LEAD summit to the Media Business Course and regular breakfast briefings for our members. We are also the official UK representative for the world’s biggest festival of creativity – Cannes Lions.

Welcome to our Advertising Pays 8 hub – a one-stop-shop for the best UK advertising campaigns that are making a positive contribution to society

Advertising Pays 8 is the latest report from UK advertising’s think tank, Credos and is focused on the hugely important social contribution made by UK advertising. Right now, we are seeing this in action in the way our industry is responding to the Covid-19 crisis and we are gathering case studies here so you can see this in more detail.

The new report includes major new research commissioned by Credos on both the public’s and the advertising industry’s perception of the social good made by industry. The report also includes a variety of different case studies that bring our industry’s social contribution to life in a practical way. These case studies are grouped under five overall themes spanning different elements of social contribution and environmental sustainability: Health & Wellbeing; Community Improvement; Diversity & Inclusion; Environmental Preservation; and Human Rights.

This  hub features many of the leading examples of advertising’s social contribution that were researched for the report. It gives more information about how the campaigns came about, the purpose behind the advert and the impact it had on our society.

We will be growing this hub on an ongoing basis, so if you’d like to put forward a campaign to be included, particularly around Covid-19, or simply would like to know more, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Ellie.

Download your copy of Advertising Pays 8: UK advertising’s social contribution here.

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Environmental
There’s a Rang-Tan in My Bedroom
BRAND / ORGANISATION

Iceland, Greenpeace

AGENCY

Mother, Passion Animation Studios

Media

MC&C Media

Greenpeace wanted to raise UK awareness of the environmental dangers that are associated with palm-oil production. It is reported that a football pitch-size area of virgin rainforest is destroyed every 25 seconds. The campaign’s objectives were to address the public’s attitudes towards palm oil, and to get corporations to change their behaviours.

Greenpeace initially released the advertisement online and in cinema, as well as leveraging some of their celebrity endorsers (i.e. Stephen Fry shared it to his 12.7 million followers). To complement this release, Iceland decided to use the video as their Christmas advertisement. Due to industry codes on political advertising it was never aired on TV, but was shared widely online.

You can watch the ad here

Impact

There were also over 800 pieces of editorial coverage, which equated to a reach of 4.2 billion.

In terms of palm oil awareness, in the UK awareness increased by 7%. Google searches for palm oil increased by 10,000% and there was an increase of 61,9000% in terms of Twitter mentions. Additionally, over 1.2 million supported the Greenpeace petition, and over 1 million signed their own petition to get the advertisement shown on TV.

Corporations took notice as well. Ocado introduced a special palm oil free aisle and reported a 28% increase in searches for “palm oil-free” products. Crucially, Wilmar (the world’s largest palm oil trader) pledged to eliminate deforestation from their supply chain, directly citing the campaign as key to their decision.