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20|05|04

Speech to the Westminster Diet and Health Forum keynote seminar

by Sarah Thane, Advisor, Content and Standards, Ofcom

Inside the Ofcom Review of the Advertising Code

Several weeks before Ofcom formally took up its statutory responsibilities, Tessa Jowell wrote to us requesting a review of the advertising code which she believed was inadequate in relation to the protection of children in the sphere of food and drink advertising. By drink here I mean soft drinks. There are a separate set of rules applying to alcohol, a product category subject to legal limits in terms of its sale and promotion and that has historically attracted a dedicated and detailed section of rules in the Codes. These too are under review in the light of the National Alcohol Review Strategy but do not form the core of my remarks today.

Prior to the request from the Secretary of State, we had been actively tracking the food debate - if I may call it that for shorthand - and briefing the Ofcom Board and the Content Board of the concerns being expressed and the work specifically underway in the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

The vast majority of Ofcom's broadcast licensees rely wholly or partly on advertising and sponsorship revenue to provide their programme services, subscription being the other main source of income. In terms of its broadcast regulatory duties, Ofcom has a dual role. One is consumer protection via content codes, including the protection of under 18s as a standards objective in the Communications Act. The other is ensuring a broad range of television services of wide appeal . Within those services there are special requirements to ensure that across the public service broadcasting channels there is "a suitable quantity and range of high quality and original programmes for children and young people".

A key regulatory principle of Ofcom is to strive to ensure that its interventions will be evidence-based, proportionate, consistent, accountable and transparent. In any event, in an area as contentious as this it seemed vital to us that we looked afresh at the issues while co-operating with, and learning from, many of the relevant stakeholders.

What I shall outline now in terms of how we are approaching the challenge presented by Tessa Jowell will, I hope, bear this out fully. Regrettably the timing of today's event comes before our research programme is complete and our regulatory options decided, but I hope to give you a flavour of the care and rigour that we are bringing to this exercise and our forward timetable.

Our first task was to design a comprehensive research programme led by Helen Normoyle, Ofcom's Director of Market Research . This is multi-stranded and primarily aimed at making sure we have the facts at many levels to inform our regulatory options.

I couldn't hazard a guess at how many tons of newsprint or hours of broadcast time has been devoted to the food debate over the past six months. Some of the comment has been highly informed and relevant; some cavalier bearing in mind the seriousness of the issues, in its reliance on opinion and prejudice rather than fact. In the red corner appears food retail, manufacturing and promotion where multi-millions of pounds of advertiser spend, product sales and jobs are at stake. In the blue corner are some stark facts about the UK's dietary habits and risks to our population's health and longevity. Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money are equally at stake in the funding of our healthcare.

Our research programme began, somewhat controversially, when we decided to commission an academic, Professor Sonia Livingstone of the LSE, to review the Hastings Report commissioned by the FSA, the response to that report from the advertising industry and a further analysis of that ad industry response again commissioned by the FSA. Food campaigners worried that these were delaying tactics and urged us to act on the evidence at hand.

But Ofcom felt the Hastings Report was an important place to start. It had firmly turned a spotlight on food promotion and its effects, especially the effects of television advertising. The ad industry vigorously disputed the findings. We wanted our own independent analysis and we have shared the initial outcomes with the FSA and briefed Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA).

Sonia's work identified gaps in the field of available academic research, not least that there are literally thousand of studies based around television advertising and its effects and virtually none about other forms such as in-store, point-of-sale, product tie-ins etc. So we asked Sonia to look at where future academic studies might usefully focus and at the media literacy of different age groups of children - an area of existing expertise for her - with a view to finding out more about the appeal of different advertising treatments to different children.

Alongside this, Ofcom research staff using readily available tools carried out various analyses including from existing market data:

• A viewing analysis looking at trends over three years in viewing in and out of dedicated children's airtime on terrestrial television and dedicated children's channels, plus trends in viewing in commercial and non-commercial airtime. This will include differences in demographics and multi-channel homes. Our aim; to understand what children are seeing and when in terms of television food promotion. This will guide considerations of where interventions, if any, may be most effective.
• Analysis of advertising spend and exposure including five years of trend analysis of the size and nature of the food market, trends in spend and exposure in and out of children's airtime, seasonal differences . Our aim; to understand the mix of food outlets and products targeted at children and across the schedule.
• Content Analysis, commissioned from audience data research specialists David Graham Associates, analysis of commercial spots in children's airtime on ITV1, informing our knowledge about creative executions inside children's airtime and in the early evening.
• Lifestyle trends and analysis, using comprehensive and longitudinal data bases, studies and panels sourced from both the Henley Centre and Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) we are learning about significant lifestyle and societal changes covering food purchasing, preparation and consumption - the latter in and outside the home - levels of physical activity, drivers of food choices and so on. The TNS Family Food Panel embraces 11,000 individuals recording their food and drink consumption in diaries.

Primary research that we have commissioned embraces an extensive programme of qualitative research covering families, mothers, children, teachers and nutritionists in which we probe the environment in which food choices, consumption and attitudes operate and inter-relate in homes and at school.

We have also undertaken a quantitative survey of 1,000 with parents and children of various ages, again investigating what they are eating and what influences what they are eating.

Sadly I cannot report the results today as drawing the threads of all these findings together is taking much of our time. But we will in due course be publishing an overall report and the bulk of the research results.

However this intelligence , alongside our content regulatory experience, is now being brought to bear on shaping our regulatory options. Among those could be new rules which impact on scheduling or creative treatments. On the scale of do nothing - inconceivable - to do a lot, I can't tell you now where we may come to rest. Those decisions lie with the Ofcom Board and the Content Board, both pre- and post- any formal consultation. What we will seek to do is reject seemingly attractive and populist interventions which the research does not support , or our experience tells us will not work .

Our aim is to launch a consultation before the summer break .

Throughout our deliberations to date, we have kept in close touch with the FSA, as well as those representing food retailers, manufacturers and advertisers. We aim to continue in that vein.

We have a very proper sense of social and public responsibility but we also have to have regard to the extent to which a regulator seeks to interfere with legitimate and lawful business and consumers' access to product information.

Thank you for listening. I hope you will read our research and take part in our consultation later in the summer.

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