6. What I have learnt about industry in relation to television advertising and how I intend to use this knowledge and understanding, to ensure my production is appropriate to the media industry context of the set brief I have chosen.

The ASA are the 'Advertising Standards Authority' who are the UK regulator of advertising. Although the ASA are a 'non-statutory organisation' and therefore cannot stop adverts from being released but can take them down if they find them offensive or misleading.


The whole UK Code of Broadcast Advertising (BCAP) code can be found here and applies to all Broadcast advertisements, TV and radio advertisements, and "programme sponsorship credits on radio and TV services licensed by Ofcom."

Here is an example of the topics covered on the document, with over 30 sections outlined, highlighting different areas of compliance for the BCAP code, including "harm and offence" and "privacy."

Although the ASA Code is very long and wordy the main rules are that advertisements should not "mislead" or "cause serious or widespread offence or harm." Many of the pages are not relevant for me, such as any of the examples of "prohibited categories" products, such as the advertising of gambling sites or charities, which I do not need to worry about. Despite this, I found some interesting statements in the code and commented on how they relate to me below.

Inappropriate factors that I will consider for my TV adverts:

• Exaggeration 3.12: "Advertisements must not mislead by exaggerating the capability or performance of a product or service"
• Therefore, I will be careful to not exaggerate what my deodorant can do and therefore not relate my protagonist's lifestyle on the deodorant too heavily

• Harm & Offence 4.1: "Advertisements must contain nothing that could cause physical, mental, moral or social harm to persons under the age of 18"
• If I use actors under the age of 18, I need to ensure that they are not seen under harm

• Harm & Offence 4.9: "Advertisements must not condone or encourage violence, crime, disorder or anti-social behaviour"
• Encouraging violence or anti-social behavior is heavily discouraged by the ASA and so I will ensure to stay away from portraying such issues

• Privacy 6.1: "With limited exceptions, living persons must not be featured, caricatured or referred to in advertisements without their permission. Exceptions are made only for brief and incidental appearances, such as crowd scenes"
• This exception of "crowd scenes" being able to be filmed without their direct permission is something that I was not aware of and puts my mind at ease, when filming exterior scenes in central London

Case Study: Dove's 'Racist' Facebook advert

The advert above was released in October 2017 by Dove UK and features a woman of African descent with a dark brown coloured t-shirt, taking the t-shirt off to reveal a Caucasian woman with a lighter-coloured t-shirt on. This featured on Facebook in the form of a looped video and raised a lot of questions about representation in advertising and how people of darker skin are portrayed.

Due to this advert featuring on Facebook, a platform not regulated by the ASA, the advert was taken down by Unilever, a transnational cooperation that owns Dove. This was taken down quickly due to the platform and also spread to Twitter where members of the social network were able to let their comments be heard. This comparison between conventional and unconventional advertising was very interesting. For a TV or print advert to be taken down, many people need to complain directly to the ASA and they need to process them and make a decision. Even after it has been ruled against, a print advert in a magazine or tube station is comparatively more difficult to take down than a social media post. Following the backlash on social media, Unilever also apologised for this through Dove's Twitter page, tweeting the message below.

Despite this, this case study is also interesting due to the feelings of the black woman who modelled for the campaign. Lola Ogunyemi, of Nigerian descent, wrote an article for 'The Guardian' about the campaign with the headline "I am not a victim." She commented on her very positive experience on the shoot with Dove and wrote, "While I agree with Dove’s response to unequivocally apologise for any offense caused, they could have also defended their creative vision, and their choice to include me, an unequivocally dark-skinned black woman, as a face of their campaign." This demonstrates the importance of representation in the media and makes everyone reflect on the true white-dominated industry that personal hygiene product advertising is.

This research has allowed me to understand the true importance of representation in advertising but even more significantly, how adverts, particularly shorter ones, can be interpreted in different ways by different audiences.



E4 is an alternative channel that targets 16-24 year olds, skewed slightly towards females. It is a branch of the Channel 4 brand and known for airing American sitcoms such as The Big Bang Theory, New Girl and The Goldbergs. However, as well as this, it has some original content in its dating shows in the reality TV/non-scripted genre including 'Celebs Go Dating' and 'Young, free and single.'

These dating shows as well as the dominant theme of romance in many of the sitcoms previously mentioned as well as the fiercely popular 'Made in Chelsea,' now on its 15th season, which is a reality TV show centring around the lives of ''affluent young people'' who live in the wealthier areas of West London. I am targeting the 850,000 average viewers per episode by representing a young happy, attractive couple having a fun date in London together, all thanks to 'Wave' deodorant and the fact that they could wave their worries away after using it. This targets both the sitcom and reality TV audiences due to the fact that the couple are happy and my advert will hopefully be heartwarming, which is a key reason that people watch and love sitcoms, combined with the fact that it will feature affluent-looking attractive young people in the centre of London.

I hope to create a memorable and enjoyable TV advert and this will be helped by my choice of music. However, I cannot simply choose any song I like due to copyright restrictions surrounding the use of music that is owned by record labels or the composers themselves. To avoid breaching any copyright regulations, I have researched further into these restrictions.

''Music is considered to be in the public domain if it meets any of the following criteria:

• All rights have expired (either over 100 years old or over 75 years old and the composer has passed away)
• The authors have explicitly put a work into the public domain
• There were never any copyrights''

Due to the fact that I was interested in music from the 60s, including 'The Beatles,' 'The Beach Boys' and 'Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons,' all of which are only 50 years old, I have decided to instead look for explicitly copyright-free music from the YouTube channel 'Audio Library- No Copyright Music' and found two tracks that I think would be perfect for my two adverts. I am planning to use the songs 'Cool' by Tobu and 'Dizzy' by Joakim Karud as they are upbeat instrumental songs that will set a lively atmosphere and make my adverts memorable.