Filmmaking- ASA Rules and Guidelines

The Advertising Standards Authority or ASA,  are a organisation in the United Kingdom that regulate the intentions and content in advertisements, by following their Code of Advertising Practice (CAP). The ASA considers over 30,000 complaints each year on around 20,000 adverts, if the advert is found to be in breach of CAP, then it is to be withdrawn by the advertiser. The ASA are very strong and have a lot of influence in this industry, which is why we need to make sure we're up to code with everything appearing in our 30 second commercials. CAP have two published documents with rules and regulations for advertising, one is called 'The CAP Code'  which is The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing. The second is 'The BCAP Code' which is The UK Code of Broadcast Advertising. Now our 30 second commercials are entering a film competition so they won't be broadcast on television in the UK, but they're been filmed with the purpose and intention of been a television advert, so it's best we follow both set of advertising standards.

Both set of standards are very similar but the 'The BCAP Code' offers a wider range of sections and rules due to it been broadcasted on television.

You can find 'The BCAP Code' at this link here:

https://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/~/media/Files/CAP/Codes%20BCAP%20pdf/The%20BCAP%20Code.ashx

You can find 'The CAP Code' at this link here:

https://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/~/media/Files/CAP/Codes%20CAP%20pdf/The%20CAP%20Code.ashx

It states under the compliance section of 'The BCAP Code' "The overarching principles of this Code are that advertisements should not mislead or cause serious or widespread offence or harm, especially to children or the vulnerable." This is a main regulation to keep in mind because your advertisement will be flagged instantly if it breaches this. It may seem like a very obvious and easy rule to follow, but if your advert tells a story or features any works of fiction, then it may be easier to confuse or mislead audiences about your product than you thought.

During our brainstorming session for various different ideas for adverts, many of them would possibly have breached 3.12 - Advertisements must not mislead by exaggerating the capability or performance of a product or service. Many of the Scunci Instatwist ideas that floated around the room, may have been stopped due to this code. Harm and Offence is a category that is very easy to cross and many adverts have been pulled because of it. Although you are mainly targeting towards your target audience, you must be aware that many other people will view this too and you must be aware about the people who can get access to it and not to offend them.

Many of the later categories don't seem to affect what we're advertising or come into how were advertising it, such as Alcohol, Medicines, Distance Selling and Political and Controversial Matters. We seem to be following the codes and standards very well to this point, due to the nature of our advert which centres around family, it is likely to receive less complaints than say one of our other adverts we're making, the Scunci sex toy ad, which because of it's implying imagery and content, you may have a few complaints. The CAP website actually offers advice and gives notes on how to follow the advertising standards, it has it's own AdviceOnline database which you can search to make sure you're not using anything incorrectly in your advertisement.