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Advertising Standards Canada

Controversies

Children's Food and Beverage Advertising

As of 2007, Canada Advertising Standards has become deeply involved in regulating the standards, procedures and rules pertaining to advertising towards children below the age of 12. In part, this has become such an important issue because of how receptive children can be of the content presented within advertisements and increasing figures pertaining to child obesity. “Regarding the early childhood period – under the age of six years – research has emphasized the importance of social influences in the development and maintenance of nutritional behaviours, showing that children’s dietary habits are largely shaped by their social environments”. Inevitably, it is apparent that advertisements form a large part of a child’s social environment both on an individual and group scale. However, despite the efforts made by Canada Advertising Standards, a study in Toronto and Vancouver between 2006 and 2009 tracked the effectiveness of those efforts to regulate food and beverage advertisements geared towards children on television. The study found that:

There was a 4.5% decrease in Children’s Food and Beverage advertising on children’s specialty channels.

Children’s exposure to these advertisements within these channels did however increase by 5.4% in Toronto and 2.5% in Vancouver.

There was a 44% increase in Toronto and a 45% increase in Vancouver of children’s food and beverage advertising on general stations.

On all stations, children’s exposure to food and beverage advertisements increased by 16.8% in Toronto and 6.4% in Vancouver.

It can be noted however, that Canada Advertising Standards has made further strives to aid in the issues of child obesity by publishing a new uniform nutrition criteria which will come into effect by the end of 2015.

Drug Advertising

In 2003, Sibbald wrote an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal discussing the coalition of medical companies who want to change the rules pertaining to the Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTC) of pharmaceutical drugs. During that time, there were certain rules that pertained to this type of advertising. If this coalition was successful in modifying these rules, Sibbald quotes Dr. Joel Laxchin who argues that “self-regulation by groups such as Advertising Standards Canada has proven ineffective”. This expert opinion suggests that Canada Advertising Standards may not be the best governing body to provide content clearance to advertising agency’s promoting both prescription drugs and non-prescription drugs. However, in 1997, “Health Canada gave Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) the responsibility to review and pre-clear non-prescription drug ads … under the guildelines that If [ASC] find that an advertisement is inconsistent with advertising codes, the company is asked to withdraw and/or replace it with one that is compliant with the law”. The controversies surrounding the advertising of drugs within Canada is two-fold: some (such as coalition groups previously mentioned) argue that there is too much regulation and consumers can become confused when viewing American drug advertisements which currently have no regulatory standards, while others (such as health care providers) argue that there is not enough regulation since many of these drug companies focus heavily on profit instead of social responsibility. Advertising Standards Canada reported that “Exaggerated health claims were among the top advertising complaints in 2013 … [and] there was a particularly large increase in complaints about online ads for complementary and alternative medicine providers”.

Alcohol & Youth Advertising

There is much controversy in Canada surrounding the promotion of alcohol to minors and the lack of regulatory standards surrounding the process. “In Canada, despite federal and provincial guidelines to restrict alcohol advertisements from appealing to children and minors, children and youth are exposed to more than 300,000 alcohol ads every year through radio, television and the Internet … alcohol media campaigns have been the primary measures for counteracting the effects of alcohol advertising. While these initiatives have the potential of doing so, the effectiveness of such measures can be easily drowned out with increasing advertising activities from the alcohol industry, especially in the absence of effective regulation”. The issues that arise from perspectives such as these that argue that there is a lack of regulation is that there is also a lack of information in addition to varying stances on how alcohol advertisements are assumed to have an effect of youth and minors. One study argues that “… the more alcohol advertising young people are exposed to, the more likely they will start to drink, or, if they are already consuming alcohol, drink more” while another suggests that “… Newer studies have found that awareness [of alcohol through advertising] has a small, but statistically significant, relationship to positive expectancies about alcohol and the intention to drink as adults”. While these two opinions do not necessarily argue against each other, the contrast does, however, insinuate that the degree of understanding pertaining to this issue is unclear and therefore makes it more difficult to effectively regulate it without further information.

Discriminatory Advertising

In response to an ad that aired during the NHL playoffs in Canada, Advertising Standards Canada received many complaints that a federal ad campaign which promoted new job grants to young males was misleading, as the grant/program was available to both men and women . This case is very controversial because it not only exemplifies that discriminatory advertising is prevalent within Canada, but also the based on the fact that the ad was paid for by the federal government in which case it becomes more difficult for Advertising Standards Canada to step in and enforce regulations or question the motives behind the advertisement. With that being said, “The media in general, and advertising in particular, play a role in reproducing cultural schemas by using existing cultural schemas to produce content. Constraints on time and space for content mean that advertising often presents extreme versions of schemas that are widely available and culturally predominant in order to efficiently and effectively communicate with broad audiences (Goffman, 1979 & Schudson, 1984). Not only is the case in question, but also the principle of discriminatory advertising as a whole and Canada Advertising Standard’s ability to overcome cultural schemas that are also so commonly used and societally accepted.