(D1) Legal and Ethical Constraints on a Cross-Media Advertising Campaign

This post is to discuss the legal and ethical issues that we will need to take into consideration in our advertisement campaign. The information here will justify the advertisement campaign and it's uses of media, and show how their are being completely legal and ethical about the content in their advertisement.

Legal, Ethical and Moral issues are some of the main factors to take into account when creating an advertisement. This is because it develops how an audience will react to your advertisement, and whether it is actually suitable to be streamed on videos. The set of rules that advertisement would need to abide has been set by ASA (Advertising Standards Authority), BBFC (British Board Film Classification), and OFCOM (Office of Communications)

Regulatory Bodies - 

ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) - ASA is the regulatory body that covers all advertisements. This body will cover everything legal and ethical which may become an issue in an advertisement. They regulate advertisements so that they are not unfair to anyone's work, and they do not offend any viewers. Companies would need to be aware of a set of rules made by the ASA for advertising in the UK. This means that they will need to keep the advertisement inside these rules, meaning that they should make the advertisement suitable for all ages, and it must not offend anybody for any reason. The ASA have set a group of legal, and ethical rules that advertisements would need to stick to. This is created so that advertisements do not use anybody's content without permission, and making any content that could come off as inappropriate or insensitive towards an audience. This will cover things such as how gender and minorities are treated within the advertisement, or within the company.

OFCOM (The Office of Communications) - OFCOM are the main regulatory body for media broadcasting. This is because they are the regulator for most types of streamed media, including media such as film, TV and radio. The job of OFCOM is to regulate these types of media, and make sure that they are sticking to all necessary rules and laws. This means that they will checkoff content is entirely appropriate, and also check if it will offend minorities, or larger groups. OFCOM are less involved with advertisements such as the cross-media advertisements we are creating, however, their set of rules and laws still apply to advertisements, so it is worth considering them. Being a YouTube advertisement, this will need to be broadcasted. This means it will also need to stick to all broadcasting regulations, regardless of when and where the videos are shown.

Legal Issues - 

Legal issues are an extremely important factor in creating an advertisement campaign. These issues are instated by the government and are laws that entail using media products online. These laws are in place for everyone that uses media products and posts online, so these laws are very important when creating media products. These laws are created by the government, and are in place across the entire of the UK.

Copyright - 

One of these laws is copyright. Copyright is the ownership of online media material, and having the freedom of choice where and how your content is used and whether you would like your content to be used at all. This means that people can inflict copyright laws on any media that they have created online. When people have this ownership, this means that companies such as ours should have either bought rights or have gained permission to use someone else's content in our work.

I will need to take copyright into consideration in my advertisement when using media products. If we use any third party products in our advertisement that is visible to the public, we must gain privileges to use this content from the author. The easiest way to bypass this is by creating every piece of content that I use by myself. This means that wI can not be challenged for our media uses, as all of them are created under my own copyright protection. I can use this content legally anywhere we would like, and for anything I would like to use it for. This means that this problem of copyright would not arise in my advertisements.

Defamation (Libel and Slander) - 

Libel and Slander are both forms of Defamation. Slander is the spoken defamation of a person or a company. This means that it would be spoken either in person, or online. This also involves things such as radio which is livestream. Slander can be treated with punishment at legal courts across Britain, as it is against the law to slander a company or person. The punishments of this can be a fine, or terms of imprisonment and community service. This sentence will depend on the severity of the crime.

The second type of defamation is Libel. Libel is very similar to slander, as it follow the same type of defamation, however, the difference between Slander and Libel is that libel is written. This means that someone has written the negative comments. This may be on news articles or messages, or any other means of writing. Libel has the same legal consequences as Slander, as the premise of the defamation is exactly the same.

Representation (False Advertising) -

Representation is the way in which I present my advertisements, and most importantly my product, to an audience. This means that I will need to make sure that I do not say that the drink can do anything it cannot, as this was be misrepresentation. The phrase is more commonly known as 'false advertising' as it is advertising something that the product can not physically do, which may be interpreted as misleading.

False advertisement may result in lawsuits as the company has claimed that the product can do something that it cannot. A good example of this is red bull's 'gives you wings' slogan which was taken to court for £16 million. This means that in my advertisement I can not claim that the drink can do anything that it can't. For example, if i said my drink could make you grow instantly this would be false advertisement.

Ethical Issues - 

Ethical Issues are not always against the law. However, they need to be taken into consideration as they could affect how an audience takes content in an advertisement. Ethical issues are anything that could misrepresent or mislead an audience, and anything that could offend an audience and certain minorities as they may not be shown correctly in the advertisement or at all.

Racial (Ethical) - 

This is a more interesting subject for my advertisements. At our disposal we have three people working on this promotion that can act in the video. We are all white people which may raise any problems included with the video. however, as long as we do not make race a specific focusing point or problem in our advertisement, we will not pass any ethical issues. This can be solved by only focusing on the guitar, and not the person in the video.

This can also be bypassed by using long sleeved clothing. This puts less of a highlight on the race of a person and more on the product in the advertisement. This problem is a large one in modern media issues, so we would need to make it very sure that we do not offend any minorities and will make sure that our advertisement will not have this issue at any points.

Gender (Ethical) - 

In our radio show, the focus is on both genders at an equal split, and has no aim towards one gender more than another. This means that our advertisement should be very easy to keep out of this problem, as long as we make it clear, or make no sway towards one gender at any points of our advertisement, unless for very specific reasons such as quiz questions. This is good as it means that our audience will be happy with how we target and treat both genders equally, and we should not generate any ethical issues here.

In order to make sure this is not possible, we use both genders for presenters (1 male and 2 female), and keep our show very neutral in terms of who we speak about and how we speak about them. There is a lack of females in these music scenes however, but this is something that we cannot change. We can help change this by using female characters more frequently in our show such as in call ins.

Offence (Ethical) - 

Offence has many categories that it could be interpreted as. The most known category of this is offensive language. This can be anything from swearing to slurring, and is not appropriate in an advertisement, or any element of media that is streamed to all ages. This is easy to dodge, however, as all we need to do is make sure that there is not language that will be of offense to anyone, which can be done with a simple double check.