Advertising Association Claims Ban On Children’s TV Ads Is Unworkable

The Advertising Association (AA) today told a London conference that a pan-European ban on children’s television advertising would be unworkable. The evidence is drawn from an interpretation of legislation in Sweden which currently prohibits TV advertising to children.

The AA believes that the guidelines interpreting the Swedish model show the legislation to be ‘knotted with detail’; an ad for a children’s jigsaw puzzle, for example, may or may not be permitted depending on the number of pieces in the puzzle. The basic rule applied in Sweden at present is that “advertisements in a television broadcast may not aim at capturing the attention of children below the age of 12.”

Commenting on this legislation, deputy director-general of the AA, Lionel Stanbrook, says: “These guidelines are not supposed to be funny. They are supposed to be serious. Unintentionally, however, they sound bureaucratically desperate – an unsmiling attempt to legitimise uninformed prejudices about how advertising works. Efforts to establish discrimination and censorship within the legal framework may exist in Sweden, but they could not work anywhere else.”

Advertising Association: 0171 828 2771