The Advertising Association promotes the role and rights of responsible advertising and its value to people, society, businesses and the economy. We represent UK advertisers, agencies, media owners and tech companies on behalf of the entire industry, acting as the connection between industry professionals and the politicians and policy-makers.

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The Advertising Association focuses on major industry and policy areas that have huge ramifications on UK advertising. This section contains our work around public health, gambling advertising, data and e-privacy, trust, the digital economy and more.

Credos is the advertising industry’s independent think tank. It produces research, evidence and reports into the impact and effectiveness of and public and political response to advertising on behalf of UK advertisers in order to enable the industry to make informed decisions.

Front Foot is our industry’s member network of over 90 businesses across UK advertising. It aims to promote the role of responsible advertising and its value to people, society and the economy through a coalition of senior leaders from advertisers, agencies and media owners.

We run a number of events throughout the year, from our annual LEAD summit to the Media Business Course and regular breakfast briefings for our members. We are also the official UK representative for the world’s biggest festival of creativity – Cannes Lions.

Advertising Matters 28.06.19

/ June 28th 2019 /
Advertising Matters

Outfoxing the competition

Following on from the UK’s success at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox MP, congratulated the 27 UK creative agencies which together won 90 awards down on the Riviera. The UK’s win total made it Europe’s leading territory and the second highest performing in the world behind the United States.

Mr. Fox said: “I am delighted by the continued success of the UK creative industry at the Cannes Lions this year. It stands testament to the UK’s reputation as a world-class hub for advertising and marketing services, and I congratulate all UK agencies which brought home awards this year.”

UK agencies won 10% of all awards in each category, on average, up from 9% in 2017 and 2018. The UK was also well represented outside of the awards, sending more than 80 speakers, 25 UK jurors and 40 SMEs to the Cannes Lions to promote the UK as a centre for excellence and review the world’s best creative advertising work. Notably, the UK picked up a third of the awarded Lions in the Creative Effectiveness category.

The release was covered in Little Black Book and you can read it in full on our website here. You can also read more on the UK’s performance at Cannes Lions in this piece over on The Drum by our Exports Champion James Murphy.

Under the influence

Yesterday, Media Smart, the advertising industry’s education programme, launched a brand new campaign aimed at helping children understand the commercial link between social influencers and brands they may be promoting. The rising numbers of social influencers in young people’s lives has prompted them to create a film-based PSHE teaching resource for 11-14 year olds, the first of its kind to tackle this area of marketing.

Click here for a taste of the film resource and Media Smart’s new website for the materials. You can read the full release on our AA website. The launch of the initiative was also covered by Little Black Book and Mobile Marketing Magazine.

TfL updates HFSS ad rules

On Thursday it was announced that TfL has updated its rules regarding the advertising of high fat, salt & sugar food and drink products, following confusion about what can and cannot now be advertised on its estate. In response, we released the below statement by our CEO Stephen Woodford, which has been covered in City A.M. here.

“Six out of 10 rules have had to be changed showing a blanket ‘one size fits all’ ban on HFSS advertising simply does not work in practice. These revisions cause additional confusion for industry, which is striving to comply with a poorly thought out and rushed policy. A number of the issues now rectified were pointed out by industry in the consultation period and could have been avoided had the Mayor of London accepted the offer from theUK advertising industry, particularly its out-of-home advertising sector, to work together on this issue.”

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