ASA Research Task

http://www.asa.org.uk/

Introduction Questions
1. What does ASA stand for?
Advertising standard authority
2. What does the ASA do?
The ASA regulates the content of adverts by enforcing its advertising codes, there are
separate codes for non-broadcast advertisements. All adverts are expected to be containing
legal, decent, honest and truthful, the advertising rules are regularly reviewed and updated
by the ASA.
3. What are the key principles of the advertising codes?
All advertising standard codes are based on the principles that advertising is legal and must
be decent, honest and truthful. They are prepared with a due sense of social responsibility
and conform with the principalities having fair competition. Ads must not impair the public
confidence in their content.
4. How does the ASA protect children?
The ASA have ruled out that any ad cannot contain anything that is likely to result in the
mental, physical or moral harm to a child. This rule was placed due to research showing of
their oblivious lack of experience being unable to process commercial advert messages for
adults. The rule prohibits ads from portraying children in hazardous scenarios or
encouraging them to engage in dangerous behaviour e.g., drugs alcohol, sexual violence etc.
Search - ASA | CAP

Use the questions below to develop your own case study examples. (TWO)

1. Give the date and the name of the company at the centre of the complaint (how many
complaints were made?)
Elieen Mannion Acupuncture

This was focused on complaints directed towards whether the efficiency of acupuncture for fertility
support, musculoskeletal problems, headaches and migraines, insomnia, anxiety and other
conditions were misleading and even substantiated. It was targeted towards the advert that was
seen on May 6th, 2017, with the exact phrasing. The advert is created to religiously publish messages
towards the idea of acupuncture being the cure to long unsolved issues people may go through.

2. Describe the advert (get a picture of the advert from the internet).

These are two examples of the

adverts that are posted by this
organisation. The advert with a
body background is focused on
using acupuncture to cure
headaches and how you come to
the reasons behind people’s
migraines or headaches. Whilst the
advert on the right focuses on similar ideas but this time with insomnia. The two adverts use the
same techniques when layering out their points, the two-use large font on text that openly admit to
the usage of acupuncture helping solve these issues. The statement issued in one of the adverts says
‘Eileen’s acupuncture offers’ and this is bold as considerably the absence of information would mean
consumers wanting a long-lasting effect.

3. Outline the main issues of the complaint.

Some of the main issues that were given was that the organisation could not provide a
substantial amount of evidence to prove their claim on the idea that by using their companies
supplies you could relive so much pain but in reality, there is little information on how long these
effects will last, when you should visit next what result could look like and if it works on a lot of
different people.

4. Which advertising codes did the advert break?

One of the codes this advert breaks is communicating the sole base of your idea/business and to
make everything clear to the audience. In these adverts, not only the ones present but the
others created before, it claims to fix headache, migraines and other sorts of issues that affect
people but it wasn’t clear that it was referring to tension-type headaches or that the effects
where only short term and therefore made it misleading to its audience.

5. Did the ASA agree with the complaints made? What action did they take?

In accordance with the complaints made the ASA begun with acknowledging that in the advert
the advertiser didn’t use the words ‘treat’ and ‘cure’, however by including that phrase it meant
that there were requirements for it to either help, improve or cure whatever issue it maybe by
the suggested list in the phrase. Although the ad refers to some listed conditions, especially
headaches and migraines it did not qualify the claims of stating relief would be short termed or
temporary. The ASA also considered that the regarding the musculoskeletal problems were
 board and even implied that acupuncture could help or improve. The ASA have shown that they
neither agree or disagree with the complaints made and so they have also taken into
consideration that Eileen Mannion acupuncture have provided a body of evidence however,
these amounts of evidence did not provide the needed detail to give access to the robustness of
the studies referred to.

After conducting a thorough investigation looking at over all the things the advert has done to
show understanding of what they meant and what they didn’t mean, including all their wrongful
claims to certain topics the ASA has said that the advert must not appear in its current form, it
wasn’t allowed to simple state or imply that acupuncture was the treatment for conditions that
they didn’t have adequate evidence for.

Case Study Links

 http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2014/10/Department-of-Energy-and-
Climate-Change/SHP_ADJ_258066.aspx
 https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2016/9/JB-Global-Ltd/
SHP_ADJ_342136.aspx
 http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2010/7/LOreal-(UK)-Ltd/
TF_ADJ_48743.aspx
 http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2010/2/Lifescan-Ltd/TF_ADJ_48050.aspx
 https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2016/8/Channel-Four-Television-
Corporation/SHP_ADJ_338107.aspx
 http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2010/3/Department-of-Energy-and-
Climate-Change/TF_ADJ_48225.aspx
 http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2010/6/Department-of-Health/
TF_ADJ_48538.aspx