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LEGAL MATTERS COLUMN by Deirdre Moss March 2011
In the world of a small business owner there are constant pressures to ensure legal protocol and regulations are met – and when dealing with the marketing and advertising of your company or organisation, this is no different.
However, although the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) already have a remit to cover offline marketing, mainly for what’s known as “above the line” promotions, from March 1 this will extend into online – including social networking.
This means that your business website and external online market campaigns, such as using useful tools like Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin, will be subject to the regulation of the Committee of Advertising Practice Code.
This is to ensure that businesses remain legal, decent and honest in all their marketing campaigns and advertisements, no matter the medium used to get the message to the audience.
The ASA is calling on companies to ensure marketing messages on websites are legal, decent, honest and truthful. It also encourages business to make sure their websites comply by seeking help and advice.
To help businesses and website owners, the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), the industry body that writes the Advertising Codes, offers a full range of training and advice resources.
Businesses and agencies are being urged to sign up to CAP Services to ensure they are up-to-speed with how the extended remit will impact on them and how they can avoid being in breach of the rules.
The main aspects the ASA looks for are companies not deliberately misleading potential customers by making obvious exaggerations of a performance or product, making false claims, marketing things as “free” and even making comparisons with competitors.
Whilst in hardcopy marketing materials, most firms strictly adhere to the rules and regs, there is an increasing level of online communication through the social networks that can potentially lead to problems.
In fact, the ASA states that last year, 2,500 people complained about website content, but under the old rules their objections were not admissible – hence the new regulations.
At the end of the day, the burden of responsibility lies with the business owners to take the right steps to ensure all communications being transmitted by their organisation are monitored and checked. If these checks and balances are not in place, then the reputation and promotion of your company will be compromised in a way you definitely wouldn’t want to promote.
For more information on the new rules, visit: www.asa.org.uk
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<p><strong><a href="http://www.lemon-co.co.uk/article_asa-regulations.php">LEGAL MATTERS COLUMN by Deirdre Moss March 2011</a></strong><br />
In the world of a small business owner there are constant pressures to ensure legal protocol and regulations are met – and when dealing with the marketing and advertising of your company or organisation, this is no different....</p>
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