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On Wednesday, the House of Commons Health & Social Care Select Committee published its report into childhood obesity and proposals to tackle it. These included a pre-9pm watershed ban on HFSS food & drink advertising. In response, our Chief Executive Stephen Woodford reiterated that such a ban would be ineffective in tackling the complex root causes of childhood obesity which are linked to a whole range of factors including socio-economic background, ethnicity and educational attainment.
He also said that while we already have some of the strictest rules in the world, the advertising industry is also “not complacent to the public health problem that exists, or the role we can play in helping to tackle it. One recent, powerful example is ITV’s sponsorship of The Daily Mile, which is a proven, proactive measure to address childhood obesity through getting kids active”.
The AA position was included in widespread coverage of the report, such as on the BBC, ITV News, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Stephen also appeared on LBC’s Drive show with Iain Dale (subscription only), as well as Talk Radio’s Tommy Boyd programme (from 6m 30 in) to discuss the issue.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies also released a report this week, stating that around half of the television advertising for food and drink that children saw was for HFSS products or for restaurants and bars. The AA was keen to point out that these figures were based on research that was three years old and the half of all food & drink adverts figure quoted amounted to just over 5% of all advert impacts delivered to children. Our position was covered in The Times and ITV, among others.
In a great example of how advertising can work to help an organisation reach untapped audiences, you may have noticed that MI6 has launched its first TV commercial (see our Ad of the Week).
The aim of the ad campaign, which premiered during Channel 4 News, is to diversify MI6’s recruitment base by reaching more women and members of ethnic minorities. The latest official figures from March 2016 showed just 24% of senior staff at MI6 and 38% of non-senior staff were women. Moreover, there were no BAME colleagues among the senior staff and they numbered only 7% of non-senior staff.
According to BARB data from 2017, commercial TV reaches 90% of the UK population every week, and 97% a month. Our very own Karen Fraser, Director of advertising’s think tank Credos, spoke to Love Sport Radio’s Ed Bowsher show earlier this week to explain why advertising is a great way for organisations to reach a wide variety of people in an effective way in order to maximise their message. You can listen to Karen here at 0:33 minutes in and read more coverage of the story here.
You’ve made it this far – why not treat yourself to watching our ad of the week?
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