UK: Fewer restrictions on TV condom ads

Advertising regulators have unveiled new rules about condom advertising and pregnancy advice services.

Changes to the advertising code also include a crackdown on TV ads that promote violent video games or making suspect environmental claims, the UK Guardian reports.

The wide-ranging shakeup of the UK’s advertising rules, the most sweeping since TV and non-broadcast codes were developed in the 1960s, follows a controversial consultation process that resulted in 30,000 responses from the public and organisations.

Proposals relating to condom advertising and pregnancy advice services sparked the most widespread debate when the consultation was launched in March 2009. Advertising regulators have now agreed to drop the historic ban on condoms being advertised before the 9pm watershed and on Channel 4 before 7.30pm.

Condom ads will be allowed at any time, but not around programmes popular with children under the age of 10. It is hoped that the relaxed rules will help reduce teenage pregnancy rates in the UK, the Guardian reports.

However, a proposal to allow TV and radio ads giving pregnancy advice was attacked by anti-abortion groups, who argued that it will lead to commercials for abortion clinics. This proposal is not included in the new code at this stage.

The Broadcast Committee on Advertising Practice, which has developed the codes alongside the Committee for Advertising Practice and the media regulator Ofcom, had already decided to delay a final decision on pregnancy advice adverts, citing the identification of ‘some outstanding matters for further discussion’.

More than 80% of the responses to the consultation – about 25,000 of them – related to this proposal, with nearly all against it. No timetable has been given for further consultation on this issue.

The new advertising code will come into force from 1 September 2010, so that advertisers have time to adjust campaigns to the new rules.

BPAS chief executive Ann Furedi wrote, in an article in the UK Independent:

‘Even if condoms are advertised 24/7, there is unlikely to be much impact on the teenage pregnancy rate. Girls who get pregnant usually know about condoms already; so do their boyfriends. Ignorance is not the excuse. Condoms also have a relatively high failure rate – often because people fail to get them out of the packet and on to the necessary part. But they are far better than nothing, and their prime-time advertising should not have been banned until now.

‘Using condoms has no adverse health effects, unlike consuming chocolate – they will not make you fat or rot your teeth. And they are not shocking any more. The pregnancy charity which claims advertising them throughout the day is going to encourage young people to have sex displays a touching and naïve faith in the power of advertising. If only toothpaste adverts throughout the day encouraged kids to clean their teeth, it would make bedtime rituals a lot easier.

‘The risk is not that condom ads will inflame the passions of the nation, but that they will pass unnoticed. But let’s not rain on the parading of prophylactics. If ads encourage people to use condoms more, then great. If they encourage more living-room chats about contraception, so much the better. My fear is that the condom makers will be so desperate to demonstrate respect for taste and decency, they will make utterly dull ads. The first advert for the morning-after pill on national TV last April provoked outrage from pro-life campaigners and yawns from everyone else. Will ads for condoms make kids want to use them? We should hope they will – and fear they won’t.’

New advertising code will relax rules on condom adverts. Guardian, 16 March 2010

Ann Furedi: Will this make teens use condoms? If only. Independent, 17 March 2010

Press release: New Advertising Codes launched. Committee on Advertising Practice, 16 March 2010