"The ASA is pretty unshockable,” says Director General Chris Graham. "People think we’re full of the great and the good and are terribly old and easily shocked. We're not."
He stops for a sip of coffee: "If you think about the context in which your ad is appearing, if it is appropriate to the medium then there is no problem. There is a lot of sexy advertising in magazines like Cosmo and Loaded. Put that on a billboard and you have a problem. The classic example is the Sophie Dahl ad for Opium. The image is fine for Marie Clare, but put it outside a school and you get the most complained about ad in five years - 948 in a week.”
Graham has been in Edinburgh for one night and already he has addressed a Marketing Society conference, visited a number of Scottish ad agencies and had a chat with the MD of a national newspaper.
"We need to reconnect with the ad industry," says Graham. "We never forget that we were created by the ad industry for a purpose. We’re not a statutory body, we’re not a Quango, we are not there to stop creative people from doing their thing. We are simply there to hold the reins, make sure that the competition in advertising is fair and that confidence in advertising is maintained.”
Graham has just completed two years as DG after joining the ASA in April 2000. Previously, he was secretary of the BBC, running between Sir John Burt and Sir Christopher Black, "generally keeping the constitutional show on the road“. He now juggles his role at the ASA with that of vice-chairman of the European Advertising Standards Alliance.
His visit to the north coincides with the ASA’s fortieth anniversary, an achievement in itself for the three pillars of the ad industry - the brands, the agencies and the media - says Graham. When the ASA was first founded 100 complaints were received in the first five years. Now the ASA handles 13,000 a year.
Graham smiles: "Some of the things that you could say pre-1962 make your hair stand on end. My favourite is “Maltesers choose the chocolate that can help you keep slim." I think that advertising has become a great deal more responsible and much more sophisticated.
"Last year we investigated 10,000 ads. We asked for 651 ads to be withdrawn or changed. Now, that is in the context of thousands of ads being placed every week."
But as technology continues to advance more messages are bombarding the consumer from increasingly different media. So, as Graham admits, the ASA certainly isn't short of things to do. However, as the expansion of media continues the ASA has to continue to strive to remain relevant: "The majority of our work concerns misleading information rather than offensive ads. The taste and decency stuff is what hits the headlines, but it is only about 20 per cent of what we do. The ASA only deals with non-broadcast ads. But quite a lot of the interesting developments in new media are in the non-broadcast remit, so we’re also responsible for regulating internet ads.
"We had 50 per cent more complaints about internet advertising last year. We adjudicated on our first SMS text ad. We are responsible for advertising on broadband, we are responsible for advertising standards of commercial e-mails, pop-up adverts and banner ads. We’ve got to be as effective with new media as we have been with conventional media, otherwise we’ll become irrelevant.”
One complication, however, that the ASA has already successfully manoeuvred around is the recent Communications Bill and the newly created regulatory giant, OFCOM: "The tectonic plates of media regulation are shifting," says Graham. "Obviously, that is significant, but we have succeeded in our first objective - to continue with our self-regulatory system. We have worked hard over the last two years to make sure that we would be able to continue to do so. The Bill confirms the white paper’s views that self-regulation works well and that online advertising, which could easily have come under OFCOM, should continue to be self-regulating and monitored by the ASA. That is a considerable achievement.
"OFCOM is going to be involved in so many decisions you have to question whether they are going to want to sit down and listen to complaints about the latest Tango ad. As you get more channels you have to question whether it will be practical to pre-vet everything, as it is now. I can imagine a situation in which OFCOM is a lot less prescriptive."
However, Graham is more interested in prevention than in punishment and looks to shift resources from investigative to preventative work, helping practitioners get their ads right first time round: "We already offer advice on our website Copy Advance Service (CAP). I wish that we could find a way of making that better known. It’s free, in that you pay for it in advance through the ASA levy, it’s absolutely confidential, very user friendly and it’s very fast. We have a target to turn around 90 per cent of enquiries within 24 hours. I think at the moment we are achieving about 88 per cent, but we're working on it.
"Frankly, though, it makes much more sense to prevent problems rather than to spend a great deal of time investigating them."