AA Policy Recommendations For Europe

The Advertising Association (AA) has submitted a number of policy recommendations for the UK Government to consider during its Presidency of the EU which begins in January. The AA believes that the UK Presidency should use its influence in the European advertising sector to:

• Encourage cross-border self-regulation, and deliver a vote of confidence to the European Advertising Standards Alliance.
• Encourage efforts to ensure that national restrictions on advertising are not prohibitive to UK companies.
• Appoint the Internal Market Directorate of the European Commission as a policy centre for all advertising issues.
• Promote frank and critical discussions on restrictive national measures. It targets France (alcohol), Sweden (advertising to children) and Greece (toys).
• Help complete the Single Market to the benefit of UK trade and commercial activity in general.

…The AA’s Food Advertising Unit has revealed preliminary results of a study into Children’s Categorisation of Food & Food-Related Services. The results show that unadvertised and infrequently advertised food products are the ones high on the list of foods mentioned by children. Six hundred 5-12 year olds were asked to name foods they knew. Of 5,500 responses only 2% were branded products. Apples, fish, carrots and potatoes were apparently all high on the lists.

The AA claims that these findings confound the claim that food advertising to children causes bad eating habits and posits this against recent reports that the Government is being urged to ban food advertising to children. The full results of the survey will be presented at the Second Annual Conference of the Food Advertising Unit on 10 December 1997.

Advertising Association: 0171 828 2771