Children’s advertising is strictly regulated and, unlike other categories, all advertisements directed to children are reviewed by a committee consisting of industry and public representatives.
This committee meets every other Monday throughout the year. Commercials submitted for review must be fully complete and ready for air. Once the committee has completed their review, they issue an ASC KIDS clearance number, which is valid for one year. This clearance number is required, in addition to TVB and CBC approvals, for all TV campaigns that include media weight in Children’s programming.
In the province of Quebec, the general rule is no advertising can be directed to children at all.
The ASC BROADCAST CODE FOR ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN (CHILDREN’S CODE) has the most strict regulations of all the categories for review. It was developed to recognize and respect the special characteristics of children as an audience. Reasoning behind such strict regulations is that children, especially very young children, can’t distinguish between reality and imagination (fantasy) and therefore advertisers must be extremely careful with their messages.
Here are some highlights from the Children’s Code:
1) All presentations must be factual, and must not exaggerate the properties of the product. You can’t show a Buzz Lightyear toy flying through the air on it’s own if the child can’t make this happen (if it’s not a flying toy).
2) The relative size of the product must be accurately established. You can’t make the toy look bigger than it actually is. This is often established by showing a child playing with the toy.
3) No advertising directed at children can directly urge the child to purchase or to ask their parents to purchase. Call to action lines like “go see the new Princess movie” are unacceptable. You must rephrase with a line such as “you can go see the new Princess movie”.
4) Any contests or promotions must not exceed one-half of the advertisement. If you are advertising a kid’s meal that contains a toy or a cereal that features a toy or giveaway, you must be careful to ensure that at least half of the commercial is about the product (the meal/cereal) and the give-away is not the main message.
5) Any characters well known to children cannot endorse or be used to promote the product. This includes puppets, cartoon characters and sports figures. If you are advertising a kids’ movie, you can’t have one of the characters from the movie talking about how good it is.
6) The way advertised items can be purchased must be made clear, with a mention of any additional required components. For example – “batteries sold separately” or “game and system sold separately”.
7) Comparison claims are not allowed. You can’t insinuate that your product is better than a competitors. Also you can’t imply that a new or next-generation product is better than the original or last year’s model.
8) Social values must be consistent with moral, ethical and legal standards of Canadian society. You can’t show a child being disrespectful to his parents or his teacher or exhibiting bad behavior in order to get the product being advertised. This is a pretty standard clause for all radio and television advertising in Canada, but there is no leeway in this regard when it comes to kid’s advertising.
9) Advertisements must not imply that possession or use of the product makes the owner superior or that without it the child will be open to ridicule or contempt. For instance, you can’t show a playground scene where one child is ostracized for not having the new “cool” toy, or looking dejected because he doesn’t have one.
Because of the strict nature of this category, it’s best that concepts be reviewed at the early script development stage so any potential infractions can be revised before ideas have been sold to a client or production dollars have been spent. ASC is always happy to weigh in on storyboards or any initial rough ideas, and they keep all such material strictly confidential.
