EASA
EASA – the European Advertising Standards Alliance is the single authoritative voice on advertising self-regulation. EASA promotes high ethical standards in commercial communications by means of effective self-regulation, for the benefit of consumers and business in Europe and beyond.
Effective advertising self-regulation helps ensure responsible advertising, meeting consumers’ demand for honesty and transparency, regulators’ demand for responsibility and engagement and businesses’ demand for freedom to operate responsibly. EASA and its members have developed a robust and coherent system of advertising self-regulation that can respond effectively to new challenges.
EASA is not a Self-Regulatory Organisation (SRO) in itself, but acts as a co-ordination point for best practice in the implementation of self-regulation, as well as operational standards for its national SRO members. Part of EASA’s role involves coordinating the cross-border complaint mechanism, EASA also collects and analyses top line statistical data on received and resolved complaints, as well as on copy advice requests and pre-clearance from its SRO members each year.
EASA was set up in 1992 to represent national self-regulatory organisations in Europe; in 2004 EASA developed into a partnership between national advertising SROs and organisations representing the advertising industry. Today, EASA is a network of 54 organisations committed to making sure advertising is legal, decent, honest and truthful. EASA’s membership is made up of 38 SROs from Europe and beyond, and 16 advertising industry associations, including advertisers, agencies and the media. EASA is a not-forprofit organisation with a Brussels-based Secretariat.
Website
www.easa-alliance.org
EASA editorial team
Oliver Gray – EASA Director General
Chiara Elsa Odelli – Project and EU Affairs Officer
Jennifer Pearson – Communications Manager
Date of publication
May 2015
Executive Summary
EASA established its first Digital Marketing Communications Best Practice Recommendation (DMC BPR) in 2008 to provide guidance to SROs in EASA membership when enlarging their remit to cover digital marketing communications. The DMC BPR builds on the principles outlined by the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) Consolidated Code on Advertising and Marketing Communication Practice (www.iccwbo.org) to ensure the application of self-regulation in the digital space.
Given the quick paced evolution of new digital and interactive marketing techniques developed in the recent years EASA identified the need to revise the Recommendation and ensure the effectiveness of advertising self-regulation. This document is the result of extensive discussions involving media, agencies, advertisers, Self-Regulatory Organisations (SROs) and key external stakeholders.
The updated EASA Digital Marketing Communications Best Practice Recommendation:
- Reconfirms the advertising Industry’s commitment to apply effective advertising self-regulation (SR) to all media, including digital marketing communications;
- Recognises the global nature of digital media and the need to develop a coordinated response across EASA’s membership;
- Provides clear guidance to EASA’s SRO members on how to determine whether content under review is a marketing communication in the digital space;
- Encourages local SROs and advertising industry representatives to ensure that the self-regulatory remit at national level is aligned with the recommendations set out in this document;
- Identifies a non-exhaustive list of digital marketing communications practices which are recommended to be in SRO’s remit;
- Identifies forms of digital content which lie outside of SRO’s remit under all circumstances.