How can we maximise trust and accountability in election advertising?
Entropy’s Founder Alex Tait is also the Co-founder of a not for profit, politically neutral organisation called Reform Political Advertising (RPA).
In the run up to the UK General Election he was invited on the James O’Brien show to discuss an Election Ad Review Panel it has set up over the last few weeks to demonstrate that the process of regulating fact-based claims can work in a General Election. You can watch it on Youtube via the above link.
RPA’s goal is to get similar rules for fact-based claims that commercial advertisers and marketers have to abide by in election ads. In case you didn’t know (and most people don’t) election ads don’t have any content regulation.
The panel has had seven people from inside and outside the ad industry take part in it.
David Puttnam (Chairman)
Chris Morris, Chief Executive Officer, Full Fact
Marina Purkiss, Political Commentator & Podcaster
Harriet Kingaby, Co-Founder, Conscious Advertising Network
Poppy Wood, Managing Director, Reset
Richard Lindsay, Director of Legal & Public Affairs, IPA
Gemma Charles, Deputy Editor, Campaign
Entropy’s purpose is to maximise trust and accountability in commerce so there are some parallels with the objectives of the campaign.
Some research the campaign has just conducted via Opinium backs up the logic of RPA’s goal. In the research 76% of the public said they would “support it being a requirement in the UK that factual claims in election adverts must be accurate” (with only 4% opposing it).
The research also found that perhaps unsurprisingly electoral advertising is the least trusted of various forms (banks, retailers, price comparison websites etc.): with some 57% mostly or completely distrusting the ads.
But there was also support for a regulatory solution which seems very relevant given the low trust we currently have between voters and politicians. 56% would trust the ads more if they knew they were regulated ‘by an authority such as the Advertising Standards Authority’.
The campaign will be building the case further with the new composition of Westminster following the general election.
