Half a century of building more trust in advertising

How Shirley Williams’ historic speech at the Advertising Association’s conference in May 1974 galvanised the entire industry into more effective self-regulation.

2 May 1974: fifty years ago.  A date of great importance to the advertising industry and to its system of self-regulation.  At the annual Advertising Association’s conference in Brighton, the new Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection, the firebrand Shirley Williams MP, had been invited to speak, along with John Methven, the Director-General of the new Office of Fair Trading.

Labour had just won the election by a mere three seats and had formed a minority government. Inflation was rocketing, Britain had been brought almost to a standstill with the Three-Day Week and there were long queues at the petrol stations where petrol was in short supply. Britain was in crisis.

There was also a sense of crisis in advertising. The self-regulatory system was failing, with many supposing that advertisements included ‘invalid or misleading claims’. The industry itself was debating the changes needed to toughen the regulatory system. Just before the Brighton conference, the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) had published a new version of the Code alongside a new Code of Sales Promotion. The question was whether this would be enough.

Shirley Williams’ presence at the conference was highly significant. In 1972, the Labour Party had published a Green Paper very critical of advertising. It put the case for a National Consumers’ Authority financed by an advertising levy. By 1974, the industry had successfully fought off the idea of funding the new body, and the Fair Trading Act had passed, establishing the Office of Fair Trading. However, Williams was keen to go further in establishing a strong consumer voice.

Though acknowledging that advertising promoted competition, she expressed concern in her speech about its impact on consumption and on particular resources – notably petrol and toilet paper. Advertising could add to pressures on wages and on price increases. It must inform consumers fully and fairly, she said, asserting that the industry could not be judge and jury of its own code. A voluntary code was not enough.

The new Director General of Fair Trading, John Methven followed suit.  He said the ASA and CAP operated on a shoestring. He described CAP as a “closed shop” of trade bodies, and the wider ASA self-regulatory system as “voluntary” not self-regulatory. It had taken the ASA thirteen years to start publishing decisions and most of the scrutiny of ads was after, rather than before, publication.  Neither the public nor the industry knew anything about the ASA anyway.

It was a wake-up call.  In the febrile political environment that existed at that time, it was clear that the industry needed to act – and act fast – if it wished to avoid the statutory control of advertisements. The truth was that, until this point, the ASA only had a £50,000 budget and ten staff and was funded by the Advertising Association. There was no external voice in the investigation of the public’s complaints or external scrutiny over the making of the codes of practice.

George Bogle, Director of Government and Industry Affairs at Reed Holdings, played a key role in leading the industry’s work to address the issues.

He came up with the idea of the advertising levy – a new way of funding the ASA. This was to be administered by a new body, asbof (the Advertising Standards Board of Finance). This distanced the ASA from its funding, a vital change which ensured the ASA could have independence of decision-making. Asbof came into being on 1 January 1975, only seven months after the AA Brighton conference. Bogle was its first chairman and he remained in place until 1990.

The ASA’s independence from the industry was also to be achieved in other ways. The ASA Council acquired greater authority and independence, with the appointment of an independent chairman and eight “lay” members plus four advertising practitioners to advise on technicalities.

The new asbof levy was very successful. In the first year, it funded an increase in the ASA’s staff from 10 to 27, enabling the regulator to tackle the eight-fold increase in complaints received (from 516 in 1974-5 to 4,086 in 1975-6).  People were getting to know the ASA existed.  This was mainly as a result of the new advertising campaign funded by ASBOF (with the help of free print media inventory) to raise public awareness of the ASA and address one of Methven’s and Williams’ concerns.

The changes made to the self-regulatory system as a result of their speeches at the 1974 AA conference are still in place. The ASA is considered a gold standard self-regulator.

And the Advertising Association continues to champion the ASA. Indeed, fifty years on, the AA’s Trust in Advertising Group has galvanised industry and media support for a major new ASA advertising campaign which has already had a dramatic effect in improving consumer trust in advertising.

Sue Eustace is the Advertising Association’s former Public Affairs Director, and is now working on a book to mark the trade body’s centenary year which will be published in 2026.

For more on the Advertising Association’s Trust in Advertising work, visit our dedicated trust section.