Blog Post 3: The ASA BCAP Code

Understanding the ASA's BCAP code was very important for me, so that I could make sure that my advert follows the guidelines to broadcast on live TV. I decided to go through main headers on the BCAP code from the ASA website and pick out the most important and relevant points.

The BCAP code is an advertising code with 32 sections that applies to all advertisements and programme sponsorship credits on radio and television services licensed by Ofcom.
From my research, I found out that ASA has many rules in their BCAP code which regulate TV adverts but the most relevant points for my advert are that it:

• must be easily recognised as an advert
• must not have misleading marketing, but are allowed obvious exaggerations
• must not have serious offence or harm
• must not have epileptic material or excessively noisy adverts
• must not condone or encourage easily reproducible dangerous behaviour
• must not refer or feature people without their permission, unless in brief, incidental appearances
• must not condone or encourage poor nutritional diet or an unhealthy lifestyle
• must not feature, imply or encourage irresponsible or immoderate drinking
• must have societal responsibility to promote safe use of transport, e.g. using a seat belt

An example of a withdrawn advert which which was the 5th most reported advert in 2017 according to ASA was the McDonald's dead dad advert, since it caused distress from the boy being visually upset due to realising that there are no similarities between him and his dad. Putting a fast food brand next to a potentially traumatic experience of death was seen as "distasteful" by many members of the public and appeared to be "trivialising grief".


This reserach is relevant to me because there are many compliance rules that apply to all adverts such as no serious offence or harm. Some of these rules also apply to my genre, for example, to not condone or encourage poor nutritional diet or an unhealthy lifestyle.

Important information that I have learnt from my research is that I should make sure to use seat belts and helmets if using transport, since takeaway delivery ads may include the delivering process of the food around the city, however I will avoid this by having my delivery person run instead. Another key point is that I shouldn't condone poor diets, e.g only eating pizza. This means that I need to add variety to my brand and make sure that I anchor the idea of healthy eating within my brand. However, the other points I researched must not be forgotten when creating my advert, because I don't want to fail the brief by breaking the code.