Huge advert on billboard near school

[NotOnMyDoorstep]

hi all

have NCed to avoid completely outing myself for this.

I've been invited to a fb event encouraging members to call the ASA to object to a roadside billboard advertising a 'Gentleman's' club. The establishment is out of town, 30 miles away.
The main reason for the admin's objection is the fact the advert is near a school and popular drive through takeaway.

Apparently our local council won't get involved as they have no hold over independent advertising space!

Is there any way/laws that could be used to make the local council get involved?

Do they really have no duty to step in, even in the broadest sense of protecting the public?

I haven't seen the advert myself, but a good friend describes it a 'not very savoury'

Jenny, Alice has it spot on. Politicians can campaign. They may not be able to physically do anything about it but they hold influence. The council officers, in the main, cannot even claim that.

If you think local authorities should have power over stuff like this, which I do not necessarily disagree with, you need to lobby government to get them to make the laws that would give the authorities the power to act.

If you haven't already, you might want to look at the 'children and advertising' section of the ASA website.

It includes a passage, which looks relevant to your case, about appropriate targeting - not just products aimed at children but wider issues of whether an ad might harm or distress children. And it explicitly says than an ad which might be acceptable in a magazine that would not usually be read by children might not be acceptable on a billboard.

The Committee on Advertising Practice (CAP) is the body that writes the advertising code, and you might get more useful info from them too.

And to finish by stating the bleeding obvious - have you established who owns this billboard, and who is leasing it for this ad. Have both been approached to see if they will remove it (on a voluntary basis), and if so what did they say?

Madamdeathstare - great advice. Maybe your deathstare could be employed to hammer home the point?

Isn't Louise Bagshawe Tory? They've been jumping on this bandwagon interested in this stuff recently. In the vague recesses of my mind I think there was something included in some proposal to do with where adverts should be...

Yes, spanners, I get that you were pointing out the reality of the situation. I was asking if we felt that this was correct? I think you've suggested now that you'd agree that perhaps the council perhaps should or could do more than dogmatically retort with a 'not my job, love'.

Given that councils tend to take immense interest in all sorts of areas of life, I'm still amazed that they are completely without influence in this matter.

I don't think the kids will realise what the advert is for unless their parents tell them.

Bonnie, I think most kids are smarter than you seem to give them credit for!

and tbh, using innocence as a smoke screen for advertising a club that objectifies women?

like my NN says, NotOnMyDoorstep

yes, our MP is a Tory and yes they have jumped on the bandwagon expressed some concern in the past, hope she replies to my email unlike one i sent before

Jenny I could not disagree more. I think councils should be spending their time, effort and limited funds tackling things that they are legaly entitled to. They should not be wasting public funds by giving people false hope, and doing PR job, in matters where they have no power or influence.

In this case there is an appropriate body who can, and should, deal with it (the asa).

I have said there may be a case for lobbying government to give local authorities more power in cases like this, but thinking things through that may be encouraging needless duplication as the asa already have power. Maybe new laws could allow the asa to do more?

Ok, I completely take you point. Can the ASA be expected to understand local issues, however? Who is the official governing authority for the minutae of everyday life within a community? I'm wondering about what power residents have to regulate the environment in which they live.

If someone is free to plaster a twenty foot long girl in her smalls outside your house and children's school, should you have to approach the London-centric ASA (as an example)?

The objection to this poster is where it is though.

If the content does not breach any of the ASA codes I'm not sure that the ASA can do anything about it either - they either say ads are OK or not on their content, nothing to do with location. I don't think they would say - you can put that ad there, but not there IYSWIM.

Does anyone know if my feeling about that is correct or not?

What I am getting at is that if the ad does not breach ASA code then they won't be able to do anything about it, irrespective of where it is.
And the council don't have powers over legal ads over where they can go

So its kind of fallen into a gap?

I could be wrong.

Campaigning, MPs, local papers are probably the best option I think.

SQ: see what I linked above - location DOES matter.

But it's an area which requires strengthening (hence my reference to the recommendations of the Bailey report). Bringing specific cases to the attention of ASA/CAP might help with the process.

BTW: think carefully about how you campaign if you take this to the press, because the Club might see a "gracious" withdrawal of one billboard (that might only have a short while left to go anyhow) as a small price to pay for the column inches.

Sorry Edith missed that! And had read the ASA thing myself. I took it to mean that something appropriate for one type of media might not be suitable for another - like their example of billboard vs magazine. I didn't take it to mean that they would narrow that down to which billboards things could be shown on - I took it to be more blanket than that.

I doubt they are big enough to get down to teh detail of individual sites and proximities to schools and so on. They deal with more yes/no for the whole lot IYSWIM. That's how I think it works anyway.

Which is really why local bodies should have some say in these things.

Is a poster of a 20ft long girl in her smalls, placed outside a school, only inappropriate in London then. Because I would have thought that would be pretty inappropriate wherever it was.

Different people in different places do have different needs, and certainly it is a high agenda issue (eg the localism bill). This would not fall under that banner because it is not just locally inappropriate it is completely inappropriate. Full. Stop.

Sorry - I should have been clearer too as it's not all on that page. And trying to find a better one I realise I may have got ahead of events.

Proximity of schools is a recognised factor in assessing whether an advertisement is harmful. There was a Select Committee report in 2008 recommending the ban of all alcohol advertisements within a specified distance from a school. I had thought this had been implemented, but I can't find anything that says for sure (it may be somewhere on the CAP page).

I'm not sure how adverts for strip clubs fit existing the 'harm to children' criteria, but post-Bailey, this is meant to be under active consideration for voluntary regulation. Presumably evidence will be needed for this, and an actual example of this type is likely to help the process.

The will seems to be there, the underlying principles have been accepted, and it is sort of in place - but too sketchily so. This process needs helping along, so I hope this does reach ASA/CAP.

And yes they are capable of dealing with local issues.

Similar issue with the council. They have to say "ok that place is suitable for an ad" they then dont have a say over WHICH ad can go there. They cant say you can advertise one product over another it would give them too much influence, especially where inappropriate content shouldnt be an issue as it is policed elsewhere.

That's very interesting Edith thank you.

It's a shame that their web page on the subject isn't a bit clearer, as if it were me I would think it was beyond their remit.

Spanners, saying that the ASA is London-centric is not to say that the poster is more inappropriate in London!! It is also not to suggest that the poster is more or less appropriate in different communities.

It's saying that the appropriateness of something in somewhere that is not London, cannot best be understood by a body that is based in the capital (which has a different atmosphere to much of the country). I am making one point only here: councils are well placed to have an influence in issues such as this and if they do not I believe they should. It seems that in simply replying to the OP that it's not their job, they are being extremely dogmatic.

Do you work for a council by any chance? You seem to be putting a lot of energy into defending them.

You may believe they should but the fact of the matter is they don't. Calling them all the names under the sun wont change that. What councils have control over is not up to them it is up to central government.

It annoys me that you are asking them to spend time and a significant amount of money interfearing in matters they have no control over rather than spending it where they CAN help. Councils have lost a lot of money and staff over the last couple of years and everything is very tight, there just isnt the slack in the system for them to run around trying to placate people and to look like they are going above and beyond when it has no impact.

There is not enough money about for them to do all of the things thay are entitled to do, what you are asking is for them to divert away from these tasks so they are able to do even less.

Noting that councils are often dogmatic is not really calling them names. I think we're full circle, though, anyway; nice talking with you.

Yep. OP good luck with the land owners, advertisers, MP, press and ASA. Hope the sign is removed before school starts.