Toys and credit targeted by anti-advertising lobby James Livesley
Advertising of credit and toys are set to be the next targets for lobbyists and regulators in 2008, the head of Australia’s peak advertising industry body warned this week.
Ian Alwill, the chairman of the Australian Association of National Advertisers and executive director of group marketing and communications for Nestlé Australia, said he expected the ad industry to come under pressure in these areas next year as he spoke at this week’s CEASA Marketing and Media Forum held in Sydney.
“With regards to regulatory pressure, currently all the talk has been about obesity, but toys will come under pressure and credit – people are concerned about that. And I would call on the industry, not just the AANA, to promote the social and economic value of advertising,” he said.
The Advertising Federation of Australia has already been informing members of its concerns about forthcoming regulatory pressures on advertising. Gawen Rudder, manager of business services and advice for the AFA, said: “We’ve been warning our members for some time that the next one to come will be finance and in particular credit.”
The level of credit advertising in the market and the level of debt among Australians could cause pressure on advertising.
“If I took up every offer for a credit card I’d have a very heavy wallet. I think you can expect some sort of crackdown,” Rudder said.
According to the Reserve Bank of Australia, in August this year there were 13.7 million credit card accounts in Australia, with an outstanding balance of $41bn.
Credit advertising comes under the remit of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. In May of this year Tony D’Aloiso, the incoming chairman of the financial regulator set out his priorities for the next 12 months – one of these was “for retail investors to develop initiatives to assist them to better manage and protect their investments and wealth” and he said this included “blitzes on advertising of complex products targeted at the retail investor”.
Meanwhile, the toy industry is also bracing itself for further pressure from regulators and lobbyists, with pester power – where marketers directly target children – increasingly becoming socially unacceptable. Dennis Bond, president of the Australian Toy Association, said toy manufacturers within the association follow the AANA code but he did foresee that for advertising there could be a “a threat, maybe not in the short term, but a long term threat”.
A particularly contentious area in toy manufacturing and advertising is the sexualisation of toys appealing to young girls. Bond said Bratz is one brand that has copped some criticism. The dolls are teenage girls which some believe are encouraging young girls to dress revealingly.
He added: “If we have anything that can been seen to be encouraging girls to be more sexy, that is potentially dangerous, as it is particularly hard to defend.”
Advertising of toys and to children in general could become more of a focus for government and regulators due to the pressure already exerted on the fast food industry. “There is a potential knock-on effect from other product categories,” Bond said.
Julie Kearns, marketing director for Mattel Australia and New Zealand, said a build-up of pressure on advertising to children could lead to a total ban.
“In some countries all forms of advertising to under 12s is banned, and that will possibly happen here, but if it does, it’s five or six years away,” she said.
Kearns added: “There have been many articles and conferences about the sexualisation of young girls, mostly concerning our competitors, but if you combine that with the obesity issue, using toys to encourage children to buy fast food, and combined with trends from overseas, we need to make sure we know what we should do in the future.”
