Tag Archives: Advertising Standards Authority

June 17, 2021 · 23:34

When perception is the brand

Yes, this sounds confusing, but it actually is not. It started with a simple article on the BBC, the article ‘Chloe Khan and Jodie Marsh rapped by watchdog’ caught me by surprise. The idea was given to me “The Advertising Standards Authority has named and shamed four influencers it said repeatedly failed to disclose when their Instagram posts were actually advertisements”, now I do not are about influencers, I tend to stay away from them and I do not use instagram. But the people that do follow these influencer tend to do so for very specific reasons. It comes to blows (to coin a phrase) when we compare this to Twitter. So when we see these two tweets, we do see the ‘promoted’ mention at the VERY bottom and these pages go towards photo’s and text surrounded by massive amounts of advertisement, some of these providers will try to get one photo per page with a next mention and the next page will show you even more advertisements. So is this not deceptive? What is the setting of the Advertising Standards Authority at that point? Is the creation of what I call ‘click bitches’ not deceptive? This has been going on for years, the in game advertisements on Android, and iOS devices have all kinds of deceptions, what have they achieved there?

And now we get to the first part, when is perception the brand. What is the perception? Are the tweets safe? Is the word ‘promoted’ enough? When we look at “Promoted Tweets are ideal when you want to increase your Twitter audience reach and engagement. When you have a big announcement, a new blog post, a marketing campaign, or an upcoming event you’d like to reach more people than you would organically, Promoted Tweets is the better strategy. This is because your Promoted Tweets will appear in users’ live feeds and search results” we see and accept that, yet when we see promotion emphasised by large breasts, is it advertisement, or deceptive conduct? Some people might not be able to tell the difference, and I believe that it becomes more and more about the ambiguity of perception. So, as such is the ‘shaming of people like Chloe Khan and Jodie Marsh warranted? As the Advertising Standards Authority is failing people, millions of people on Twitter, on iOS and Android games, is going after smaller players not merely hypocritical? As such, is the advertisement of 23 camping pictures deceptive? Perhaps the overload of advertisements is merely a side effect? As such, does the inability to act against Twitter, Facebook and Mobiles games not merely make the act against the influencers slightly overkill? And all this is before we take notice of “The ASA was responding to the #filterdrop campaign that called for it to be compulsory for influencers to state when they use a beauty filter to promote skincare or cosmetics”, this is what magazines have been doing for years, where was the Advertising Standards Authority then?

It all takes another turn when we take a look at the freedom of speech, this is shown in the last tweet.

First of all, the person gives the names and they are seemingly correct, but it is “Given that anti-rationality, anti civil rights (anti-woke) channel GB News is losing major advertisers already, due to the crap they are peddling, suggest some alternative advertisers” that makes me wonder. You see filtered information is handed to us by the bulk of the news channels. The evasion of news regarding Houthi missile and drone attacks against Saudi civilian targets is the most visible one, but not the only one. If the left filters to the left, is the right not allowed to filter to the right? And so far I saw three GB news articles on Youtube there was a view I might not agree with, but should they be attacked as such? So when we are given “I’m excited to tackle difficult subjects with voices you haven’t heard before”, so what is the problem here? And GB News matters, you see perception comes in two sizes, the perception we see and detect and the one that sneaks up unnoticed, but they are both filter forms that aid the perception that the transmitter wants to give us, so where these advertisers leaving through peer pressure, or is there a case of actual evidence? Consider that Andrew Neil has been working as a journalist since 1973, meaning he optionally has more experience than the sum of some news channel cast members. In addition, when we see “due to the crap they are peddling”, do you think that other breakfast TV shows are not peddling crap? Is one side better than the other? No, I do not think so, but there is a chance that if both exist I might get a decent balanced central view. In the end this is not merely about the news, you see if it was about the news, people would simply not watch it and if no one watches it the channel dies, but there is a larger need, the need for advertisers and there is the crux, saturation demands that advertisers choose where they are and they are wherever the masses are, the Express gives us “Despite the complaints from some viewers regarding the sound, the show pulled in thousands of viewers as according to BARB data, 164,500 people tuned in to watch between 7pm and 11pm on Sunday night”, which accompanies ‘Launch show beats BBC and Sky despite ‘technical difficulties’’ and that would scare any news channel, the fact that there might be a market for GB News and that is where these advertisers are soon to be, where do I get the best reach? It is a business decision and that decision is what other media fear, Fox grew to greatness and the news channels are scared of that, and whilst they TOO adhere to shareholders, stake holders and advertisers. The bulk of the advertisers can only afford one place, not all places and that is the fear of filtered information. The news is too much on shareholders and stake holders, all whilst the advertisers play (at times) a dubious role in this setup. Am I a fan of GB News? I do not know, I have not been able to make up my mind yet. I get it, a 24 hour channel needs it human interest stories, but when I see news of a cremated cat, I wonder who will cover the Yemen events. Consider that the BBC gave us on the 8th of March “The UN says the war has caused created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and caused an estimated 233,000 deaths”, yet the UN gave us on December 1st 2020 “UN humanitarian office puts Yemen war dead at 233,000”, so do you think that in 4 months in slaughterhouse Yemen ZERO deaths occurred over a period of 4 months, or is someone not doing their job? And when we realise the answer to that, do you really think I give a toss on the premise of a cremated cat from either GB News, Fox News, CNN, BBC, Channel 7, Channel 9, Sky News, ITV, CNN, Euronews, or CNBC? You have got to be joking. Does it make GB News bad, lousy or useless? No, but they are slightly to the right and the left does not tolerate any channel on that side of the aisle, they thought that Fox News was enough, but if Andrew Neil gets his way, the European channels will get nervous soon enough and no matter what the advertisers do, when someone bails ship others will try to get a slightly sweeter deal, when that comes out GB News will get its share of advertisers, I have no doubt, what remains is the perception created and it takes a little more time to see how GB News will fare and how the people will perceive it.

Pointless versus useless

Yup, consider that part and consider just how useless government oversight really is. To show this we get to the articles about three weeks ago, I noticed them, because I had the aggravated issue with deceptive conduct in advertisement for a while. Several sources give us ‘Ban for annoying puzzle ads which don’t represent the actual game’ (or a version thereof), with the sub-line “The Advertising Standards Authority has banned ads for Homescapes and Gardenscapes”. I have nothing against the game, but any match three game is rigged from the start, it is a clever way to get you to try and perhaps you will make a small purchase, and then she are caught in the addictive need, some just quit. I am ahead of the curve and I steer clear of all these match three games. Yet, The people behind these games (not just these two, others too), made an actual brilliant advertisement jab at the games giving us a DIFFERENT game where you have to select a solution, as such we see “Paid-for Facebook posts advertising games with puzzles – but which did not represent the vast majority of actual gameplay – have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)”, this is what got to me too and when I saw the news, I was happy. So what happened today? Gardenscapes advertisement (the bad one) now shows up in Fallout Shelter in the iOS version, as such it seems to be bloody pointless. Perhaps it is the price for $8.5 billion, perhaps it is the price of joining Microsoft, yet these so called banned advertisements are back, or they never left. Sometimes vacation does not end, it merely changes location.

This gets me to the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/8593c8b5-5a98-4002-ac5a-68b59fbb6463) which was given to us in May with the headline ‘Russian brothers behind ‘Gardenscapes’ emerge as lockdown winners’, and we also get “Two Russian brothers living in London have emerged among the big winners of the lockdown, with their mobile games Gardenscapes and Homescapes making $200m from in-app purchases in April alone”, which sets the station that when you are rich, the ASA might not do anything, OK that is just speculation, but the stage is clear, and nothing seems to be happening. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, 200 million in a lifetime is nothing to be sneered and they are making that each month, I merely wonder if the deceptive advertising was essential to make that much money.

So here we see the stage of pointless (having little or no sense) versus useless (not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the desired outcome). You might think it is the same, but it is not. The difference was seen in my Pencak Silat classes when I was a young lad (when I was 63.8% smaller roughly). Defensive systems (like Judo) are pointless, you are under attack, only countering doesn’t get the job done, there are pure attack based styles which are useless, if you are under attack, one needs defence, so the best martial art is one that decently covers attack and defence. Yes, we have seen all those movies on how great defence is, yet those grandmaster have been at it a decade or two and that tends to be far away from those starting some form of martial art. It now gives rise to the same setting with the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority), they can go after Facebook all they like, yet when the advertiser moves to advertise via Bethesda games (Fallout Shelter) how useful was the jab at Facebook?

And when the advertising server moves to the USA, or perhaps Canada, or Saudi Arabia, how will that affect the verdict? It seems to me that the leading man, Guy Parker who has been chief executive of the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) since June 2009; living of £120,000 a year might be able to keep up his income and fruitless actions, yet I merely wonder at present what he achieves, do you not feel the same way? When I see advertisement (the deceptive kind) move from place to place, I wonder why we need a man making well over $250,000 a year, it seems a pointless action and a useless way to spend that much money. Feel free to disagree, but there is a massive digital failure in that regard and I reckon I am not the only one thinking that.

In all fairness

I feel that, at times, there is a duty to speak out for the other side. Not because I like it, or because it is essential, but because it is right to do so. Now, let me be clear, I have spoken out against Rupert Murdoch and his phone issues for some time, yet when I saw this article in regards to page 3 (at http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/05/sun-page-3-advert-banned-sexist), I felt it was essential to stand up in favour of page 3. So what is the big deal? I remember seeing page 3 when I was young, innocent and thought that page 3 offered newsworthy information. You find me any boy between 15-18 who thinks that it was not news worthy, then there is a 1% chance he is gay, which is fair enough and 99% chance that this boy is lying (just to coin an option).

That is pretty much the gest of it, but what is in play? The issue is not with the page 3 girl immediately, but with the text behind it “Promotion offered subscribers who recruited 10 or more players to their fantasy football league the chance to win a date with a Page 3 girl“. Is that not great?

No, it is stated “More than 1,000 complaints were received by the advertising regulator about the email promotion“, how lame is that, which I admit is my view of it.

Consider “10 lucky readers can win the ultimate Valentine’s Date with Hawkins herself“, it was a chance to win a date with Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins. So how many letters were sent there? There was an equal complaint of zero to win a date with Brad Pitt through some gossip girls column, whilst he was already married to Angelina Jolie. Then there is the option to Win a date with FHM cover star Georgia Salpa! The list goes on, Ed Sheeran, Cody Simpson, Melanie Iglesias, none of these drew the complaints, but the Page 3 girl did. This is of course the additional weirdness, it was not Mellisa Clarke, Lucy Collett or Lacey Banghard (all former page 3 girls), but the term ‘page 3 girl‘, the label that grew the Sun, that is the part that seems to be under attack. Lucy Colette is now regarded by FHM magazine to be one of its 100 Sexiest Women in the World, so no sexism there? Some of these models have been active for PETA, some have backed a major breast cancer awareness campaign for Breakthrough Breast Cancer, and this list goes on. There is no denying that most men watch page 3 to stare at ‘the twins’, yet these women, many of them used this platform to launch awareness and activities on social levels that have lasted for years.

So, can we all agree that these are either these 1000 complaints come from men who are either jealous or moms who consider their 18 year old on a date with a page 3 girl too offensive? I know that neither is likely the case, but in my view this complaint was hypocrite at best and if we want to have a go at Rupert Murdoch then that is just fine with me, but choose something that should be attacked (like phone hacking). Not some date with a woman, likely to be in a place where she will remain all dressed (many restaurants in London tend to frown on their topless clientele, even when those clients are male).

This is the crux, page 3 is a gimmick it is advertisement, one that has been there for decades. On one side from the newspaper to the topic of sex sells and on the side of the model, to get perhaps a chance to get into modelling, to make some money, whilst they know that a photo, is merely a photo, and these women might sunbath topless and that will not bring them money and still they are likely to get photographed. There is nothing apprehensible about this. The woman does not have to pose and this extra option for a woman, perhaps a model to go out on a nice date with a guy and all is paid for from the credit card of Rupert Murdoch, possibly in a location neither could afford is just an extra bonus. Now let’s look at the other side, were these women truly demeaned, or are they strong independent women setting themselves up for another round of them marketing themselves. You see, these women are basically doing the same thing Brad Pitt and Jennifer Hawkins were doing, just because these two are making millions, no one is complaining. How hypocrite can people get?

This all takes another turn as the Advertising Standards Agency upholds the entire issue. The wordplay, which is what we are used seeing from the Murdoch machine is the same as ever, half-baked innuendo, but no added fire. The text of the ASA that “the offer of a date was sexist, demeaning, offensive and objectified women“, means that they must now ban ANY date option from so many magazines. I wonder how Rupert Murdoch will strike back, because he will in some way. So why is this, a big deal? Well, it isn’t a big deal, but it does show an amount of double standards, which I personally find offensive.

You see, there is another side to all this, as we see some actions which I consider to be lame and counterproductive, because they also defuse the actual need for action as we see the aggravated harassment of Caroline Criado-Perez, as she was able to get Jane Austen on a 10 pound note, that was important, to fight for the safety of Anita Sarkeesian as she is threatened for her right to freedom of speech, this is a massive issue. Yet the issue of some people winning a date with a woman who posed topless by her own free will is just a little too stretched. What makes a date with one of these models more objectifying then a date with former Miss Universe? It does not and I think that the women are not objectified, which makes me wonder who the 1000 complaints were from.

Let’s take one final look at the one part the ASA had upheld: ““In the context of the ad, we considered that to offer a date with a woman as a reward for success in the game was demeaning to women and objectified those offered as prizes.”“, is that so? I am not debating whether it is or it is not, but how come we see no persecution (or is it prosecution) for FHM and other magazines offering the main prize to be a date, simply because no complaints were filed?

It seems to me that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has its work cut out for them, if we consider the 2010 ‘Cosmopolitan Win A Date with Bryann F and Fabio Ide‘, and if we consider the ASA advertising codes on consistency, then quoting the ASA “Consistency is a principle of good regulation; it helps to create clarity which leads to good practice amongst businesses. Something that is good both for industry and consumers. It also helps us to do our job better and concentrate our focus on where it is most needed. That’s why we strive to ensure that the advertising standards set by CAP and the rulings reached by the ASA have proper regard to consistency“, under that guise it will be up to them to ‘outlaw‘ any magazine to offer a date as a prize, I just wonder how the Justin Bieber fans will react when their possible dream date is off the table, not to mention all the other people who allow themselves to be the date for fattening the wallets of good causes and charities, I think that this entire page 3 issue was overexposed and many others might not like the consequence of the result.

Tag Archives: Advertising Standards Authority

When perception is the brand

Pointless versus useless

In all fairness

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