6.What I have learnt about industry in relation to television advertising and how I intend to use this knowledge and understanding, to ensure my production is appropriate to the media industry context of the set brief I have chosen.

As specified in the brief, the adverts that we make must follow the guidelines of the ASA, so I wanted to research these to find out more about how the advertising industry is policed and how it will affect my advert.

The Advertising Standards Agency is the UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all media. They make ads responsible for consumers by monitoring and picking up trends in complaints. They can have the ad removed if they persistently break rules and refer them to Ofcom or Trading Standards for further action. The ASA are constantly revising and changing rules to fit with modern society thinking via an independent counsel made up of people of all type. 70% of their work is to do with misleading advertising – e.g. hidden costs or not specifying that something is an ad. Other 30% is about offense and harm.

The advertising standards agency has a broadcast code relating to all advertisements. If a viewer has a problem with something they see in an advert they can make a complaint to the ASA, it will be reviewed and further action may be taken. They will assess a complaint against their rules. If they see a problem, they help the advertiser amend or withdraw the ad, these are known as “informal cases”. They may conduct “formal” investigations aswell. However, they can’t assess ads until they’ve come out because there are so many. The ASA's slogan is "Every UK ad is a responsible ad."

The ASA Broadcast code has over 30 points. Including rules around. 

• Misleading advertising – anything you claim, you must be able to prove. For example, saying something is “free” when there are hidden costs, fake testimonials and unfair comparisons
• Harm and Offence – e.g. Loudness of ads, shock tactics and photosensitive epilepsy.
• Advertising for children – unfair pressure, unsafe practices and pester power
• Social responsibility rules – lotteries, gambling, betting, alcohol – the reason why you often see “Please drink responsibly” etc. at the end of alcohol adverts.

Advertisers have been put on notice that they will be toughening up on gender stereotyping. E.g. “family members creating a mess while a woman has sole responsibility for cleaning it up or an ad that features a man trying and failing to undertake simple parental or household tasks because of stereotypes associated with his gender.”

   An example of an ad that does adhere to the ASA guidelines would be the recent Dove UK #mybeautymysay ad, featuring stories from real women who stood up to traditional stereotypes around beauty and femininity. This ad would definitely be approved by the ASA as it depicts a wide range of races, body sizes and professions and call for social equality.

Lynx Ad banned in 2011 after 113 complaints

Sexually suggestive, demeaning to women, and inappropriate for public display because it could be seen by children.

In 2016, 9/10 complained about ads were Television adverts. As I have chosen to do TV for my coursework, I need to be particularly careful that my advert fits in with these guidelines. I especially want to depict gender roles equally and fairly, not only because this would benefit advertising of a unisex product but also because of the recent crackdown by the ASA


Both my adverts are going to feature non-diegetic sound and therefore it was important that I find un-copyrighted music that I could edit appropriately to last for the 30second alloted time.

From research I found that

• The music i can use must be in the public domain
• This can be anything over 100 years old from the release date, or if it has been 75 years since the copyright notice was put in place and the composer is no longer living. 
• Because I want to convey the 'youth' brand identity I decided to find music produced recently that is free from copyright, there are many websites where you can purchase or download the music
• Some authors explicitly put work in the public domain
• It is unlawful to use music that is copyrighted then you cannot perform, distribute
• Recent popular songs that have entered the public domain are happy birthday and 'love me do' by the Beatles
• For my pieces I have used a website called www.Bensound.com where a man creates copyright free instrumental music for anyone to use. 

The Copyright Office regulates this - www.Gov.co.uk states -

Copyright in a sound recording will usually be owned by the record producer and is separate from any copyright in the content of the recording. For example:

• the composer of the music will be the author of the musical work and will be the first owner of the copyright in that music
• the lyrics of the song are protected separately by copyright as a literary work and will usually be owned by the person who wrote them

E4 Audience - Tailored to 16-34 year olds

The channel was launched as a youth version of channel 4. They pioneered linking TV with social media an the internet by streaming things live and setting up many accounts that fans were encouraged to use. They rely largely on advertising for there funding. The receive a very large share of the 16-34 demographic, at highs of 5.5% in 2016 which was the highest of any digital channel.