What Voluntary Arrangements Can Help You as an Advertiser?

What Voluntary Arrangements can help you as an advertiser? This is a very pertinent question to anyone in the trenches involving advertising.

There are two voluntary arrangements which concern specific areas of advertising. These are the Mail Order Protection Scheme and the British Code of Sales Promotion Practice.

First, let's examine the Mail Order Protection Scheme (MOPS). This exists to protect the public against unscrupulous traders using direct response advertising to collect money, and then disappearing without supplying the goods. If you are planning to place a direct response ad, you will be required to complete an application form so that your credentials can be checked.

You may also be asked to furnish an indemnity. This means that you will have to deposit a certain sum of money, so that if you fail to supply goods for which a customer has paid, or if you refuse to issue a refund for goods returned, then your indemnity will be used to mate those payments.

The British Code of Advertising Practice (BCAP) also requires direct response advertisers to:

• hold adequate stocks of their product before advertising

• fulfill orders normally within thirty days

• accept returns of undamaged goods within seven days.

As such, let us give a closer look to the British Code of Sales Promotion Practice (BCSPP). This Code is also administered by the ASA. It controls sales promotion schemes - premium gift offers, free gifts, vouchers, competitions, draws, etc. Most of the Code is straightforward - it simply requires that promotions should be fair, honest and truthful.

However, there are very specific requirements for the wording of promotions, and for the conduct of competitions. So if you are planning to use such a scheme in your advertising, you should contact the ASA to ensure that what you have in mind is acceptable.

It is important as an advertiser to develop your own sort of self checklist:

• Which of the various functions involved in producing an advertisement do you think you can perform yourself, and which do you think will have to be done by experts?

• Are you happy with the amount you are budgeting to spend on advertising? If it is less than one per cent or more than three per cent of your turnover, is there a good reason?

• Are you budgeting for and planning a year's advertising so as to have some cohesion to your campaign?

• Do you fully understand your obligations under the Sale of Goods Act, the Trade Descriptions Act and the three voluntary codes - the British Code of Advertising Practice, the Mail Order Protection Scheme and the British Code of Sales Promotion Practice?

All are incredibly valuable in protecting your needs and helping you.