JOHN McGEE

A robust regulatory environment for marketing communications is the only way to protect consumers from overzealous marketers

Time to end the marketing baloney in advertising

EVERY once-in-a-while, the marketing and advertising community gets a kick up the ass. And when it does, it’s generally deserved. Most of the time the kick is administered by a regulatory body or organisation as a reminder that whatever marketing sleight-of-hand or advertising hocus pocus they are trying to foist upon consumers, it is either breaking the law or is not in keeping with the spirit of the self-regulated codes to which most marketing and advertising practitioners are obliged to adhere to.

In many cases, a rap on the knuckles will suffice and the offender, like a naughty school boy who has been caught smoking behind the bicycle-shed, promises not to do it again. But, as naughty school boys often do, they re-offend again and again. At some stage they will find that their ad or their piece marketing communications will not run in a newspaper or on TV. And in some cases, they can face fines. But that’s why we have rules and codes. It’s also one of the many benefits that comes with being part of the European Union, which has gifted us with a wide range of regulations aimed at protecting consumers from dubious and often overzealous marketing practices.

The simple rule-of-thumb test, according to the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI), is that all marketing communications should be legal, decent, honest and truthful. They should also be created with a sense of responsibility to both consumers and society at large.

It’s more than fair to say, however, that the vast-majority of marketers and advertising practitioners — and the brands they work for — behave responsibly and ethically. Indeed, over the past number of years, a strong culture of compliance, policed by the likes of the ASAI, Copy Clear and even the Central Bank of Ireland, has developed within the wider marketing communications industry.

But in the marketing world, there will always be grey areas that are open to both interpretation and obfuscation as marketers and advertisers do whatever it takes to woo consumers by the subtle use of packaging, branding and marketing jargon — some of which bears no reality to what’s inside the packaging, never mind some of the spurious claims that are being made about its provenance.

A case in point is Tesco’s spat with the National Farmers Union (NFU) in the UK, which recently lodged a complaint with Trading Standards over the retailer’s use of made-up British farm brands like Willow Farms, Boswell Farms and Woodside Farms. According to the NFU, the use of these British-sounding made-up farm brands is misleading consumers into thinking that they are buying British produce when in fact some of product came from the Netherlands and Denmark

The NFU also found that beef that originated in Ireland was being sold under the somewhat comforting and reassuring Boswell Farms brand.

For its part, Tesco is not about to blink any time soon, given that some of its other rivals have their own made-up farm brands.

Indeed, when it came to announcing its second quarter results in October, Tesco ceo Dave Lewis attributed some of the success of the group’s turnaround to increased sales of these farm brands.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen what Trading Standards in the UK has to say, if anything at all, about the NFU’s claims.

But this spat with Tesco will not have gone unnoticed this side of the Irish Sea where food manufacturers here have fallen under the spotlight after the Food Safety Authority (FSA) and the ASAI announced last week that they were calling for a halt to brands spuriously associating themselves terms like artisan/artisanal, farmhouse, traditional and — possibly the most-over used word in food manufacturing — natural.

A quick walk through the nation’s shopping aisles will unearth a large number of brands that use these terms on their packaging and as part of their marketing message to consumers. Some of them can legitimately stake their claims to do so.

According to the FSA, “it is recognised that the marketing of food is essential for business development in the food industry and that marketing terms are designed to resonate with consumers.

However, when marketing terms are used incorrectly they have the potential to mislead. Consumers should be confident that the foods they buy are accurately and truthfully described and labelled”.

The guidelines — which were arrived at after consultation with the food industry — set out strict rules about how these much-abused terms can be applied by food manufacturers, while they will also support the ASAI’s own Code of Standards.

As any forensic linguist (this is not a made-up job) worth his or her organically-harvested salt will know too well the mere mention of words like farmhouse, artisans and traditional in food marketing conjures up reassuring images of idyllic and pastoral settings that could be plucked from a Thomas Hardy novel where everything that is produced is both wholesome and natural.

While some people can see through all of this for what it is — marketing baloney — there will be others who don’t and this is precisely the reason why a robust, but fair, regulatory environment is needed.

Consumers, no matter how gullible or daft they may seem, need to be protected, not just from marketers or advertisers trying to pull a fast one, but also from themselves.