Advertisers accuse health campaigners of trying to destroy UK advertising
27 Jun 2008
Public Affairs Director of ISBA, the voice of British advertisers, Ian Twinn, has said that if the anti-advertising pressure groups get their way, advertising as a vibrant creative and economic force in the UK will die.
Speaking in Brussels to an audience of senior in-house lawyers and marketers at the annual European food law conference, he said: “The arguments of the assorted pressure groups, health lobbyists and so-called child protectionists are baseless and harmful to UK plc.
"If we extend them to their logical conclusions we would see all manner of unjustified restrictions introduced, ranging from packaging bans to bans on commercial communications right through to product bans and everything in between.
“Already, just in the last few weeks, I have heard activists calling for total TV ad bans on food. And they have called for the total exclusion of branding from HFSS food packaging – they want the nation’s favourite foods to be sold in plain white packaging.
“Be in no doubt that, if these pressure groups are left unchecked, this is the bleak place where business and marketers will find themselves.”
Referring to new research from the Advertising Association this week that says binge-drinking is caused not by advertising but by peer pressure, Ian Twinn continued: “In the same way as advertising isn’t responsible for binge-drinking, neither does it cause obesity.
“For the activists to say it does is seriously misleading. Obesity is caused by eating too many calories and then not doing enough to burn them off. The health lobby cannot be allowed to continue to peddle their anti-advertising myths.”
