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Children deserve
special consideration from advertisers
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| Britney is cool
and ethical too |
Paris,
22 May 2003
- Advertisers should refrain from exploiting the inexperience or credulity
of children. This is the central message of a compendium of ICC rules
on marketing and advertising that apply especially to young people.
Passages relevant
to children have been extracted from the eight self-regulatory ICC codes
on marketing and advertising to spell out the special consideration they
should receive.
Written by the ICC
Commission on Marketing and Advertising, the Compendium notes that in
today's information society, advertising is a normal part of a child's
everyday life. "One aspect of growing up is to learn the critical
thinking skills to evaluate the information flow from the media,"
the introduction states.
The ICC marketing
experts add: "Children have a right to information about the products
that interest them. Nonetheless, ICC expects all commercial marketers
to acknowledge that children may constitute an audie
nce with a more limited
capacity in assessing information in advertising."
ICC's marketing and
advertising codes are key documents for the advertising industry worldwide.
Setting universal standards, they cover sponsorship, sales promotion,
direct marketing, environmental advertising, direct selling, marketing
and social research and advertising on the Internet.
The compendium makes
these specific points:
- Advertisements
should not understate the degree of skill or age level required to use
a product
- Price indications
should not lead children to an unrealistic perception of the true value
of the product, for instance by using the word "only".
- Advertisements
should not imply that a product is immediately within reach of every
family's budget.
- Advertisements
should not have the effect of bringing children into unsafe situations
or of encouraging to consort with strangers.
- Advertisements
should not undermine parental authority.
Compendium
of ICC Rules on Children and Young People and Marketing
ICC
Commission on Marketing and Advertising
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