The Compliance team acted against non-compliant advertisers 846 times during the year; just 13 cases remained unresolved at the year-end. 21% of active cases related to post-investigation compliance, when advertisers had not given the ASA a signed assurance that they would change or withdraw an ad after an upheld adjudication. Most advertisers eventually agree to change their ads, but in 12 cases sanctions were applied, including the distribution of Ad Alerts – requests to the media to withhold publication of advertisements that break the Code. The team issued 54 Ad Alerts during the year.

The Compliance team often intervenes pro-actively: it checks over 4,500 ads each month as part of its routine monitoring. The monitoring, which covers press, magazine and online ads as well as direct mailings, highlighted 429 advertisements that seemed to break the Code. The team secured 341 assurances that advertisers would change their ad without the need for other action. When no such assurances were forthcoming, sanctions were applied or advice given. Eight post monitoring compliance actions remained in progress at the end of the year.

Level playing field
The self-regulatory system works to protect businesses as well as consumers. By upholding a level playing field between companies, the ASA helps to ensure fair competition. The Compliance team contributed to that end in 2004 by promoting compliance with the Code in six different business sectors, including advertisements for skin creams, telecoms and driving instructor training.

Two decisions made by the ASA Council were communicated across the relevant business sector to ensure compliance: one, that television screen and tube sizes should be provided in the same unit of measurement so as not to confuse consumers; the other, that sponsored search engine results on the Internet should be clearly identified as such.

Three budget airlines were among the companies against whom compliance action was taken for repeatedly breaching the Code. The team continued to improve compliance across the budget airline sector and raised 90 separate breaches of the Code directly with flight marketers.

Legal backstop
When the ASA’s non-statutory powers do not persuade an advertiser to change their advertising, the Compliance team may ask the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to back up the self-regulatory system with legal action.

One company that flouted an upheld ASA ruling – Sport Newspapers – was referred to the OFT during the year. The ASA ruled against a front-page flash that stated: “Daily Sport 10p Today”. In fact, the 10p offer related to a separate magazine: the cover price of the Daily Sport was 40p. After OFT action, Sport Newspapers provided a signed assurance that future layouts and headings of the paper would not give a misleading impression about the price at which the paper could be bought.

The OFT also stopped some misleading homeworking advertisements after a referral by the ASA. The advertisements, published by Neath Mailing Services, implied that respondents could earn money at home by filling and returning envelopes, when in fact the only way to earn money was to help recruit new agents to the scheme.

Despite several signed assurances from the advertiser after an upheld ASA ruling, Neath Mailing Services continued to distribute mailings that contained the same misleading claims and the Compliance team referred the company to the OFT.

The team achieved another success with cross-border court action in Europe against Belgian company D Duchesne SA, which had been sending catalogue mailings to UK consumers under the trading names TV Direct Distribution and Just 4 You. The recipients were notified of a large cash prize win but were led to believe that they had to make a purchase from the catalogue to secure their prize. In fact, prize-winners had been pre-selected. Following an ASA referral, a commercial court in Brussels ruled in favour of the OFT, preventing the company from sending misleading mailings to the UK.