ADVERTISERS ARE MORE ATTUNED TO THEIR CONSUMERS
By Adnews Staff
Advertisers are becoming more sensitive to consumers' concerns about advertising, according to Advertising Standards Canada. An increasing number of companies are revising or withdrawing an advertisement before it is evaluated by either the ASC's code or guidelines. "This year, we even had a case in which an advertiser changed an ad after being informed by Council that no code infraction had been identified. The advertiser elected to take action nonetheless to respond to the expressed consumer concerns," ASC president Linda Nagel says in a release. The ASC fielded 598 consumer complaints last year. This compares to 590 in 1996 and 764 in 1995. National English-language complaints rose 6% from 271 in 1996 to 287 in 1997. French-language complaints rose 23%, from 176 in 1996 to 229 last year. This may be due to a high number of complaints posted against a few print and TV ads in which the body of a car was compared to a woman's body. In one case, the commercial made a similar comparison to the body of a man. 1997 marked the first year in which complaints were sustained about the negative or stereotypical portrayal of men in both English and French Canada. In addition, there was a drop in complaints to the regional councils last year, from 141 in 1996, to 82 in 1997. Of 132 complaints sustained in 1997, 37 resulted from automobile ads. But the category receiving the highest number of actual complaints was the personal and proprietary, a category which includes feminine hygiene, cosmetics, clothing and hair care products. The ASC believes this may have happened because the organization isn't as well known at the regional level. This year, the ASC plans to increase its communication efforts and establish an Atlantic Canada council to handle consumer complaints about local and regional advertising. The ASC is an industry body consisting of advertisers, agencies, media organizations and suppliers. It administers the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards, the principal instrument of advertising self-regulation.