The Global Advertising Regulation Handbook

Citation

Maria Belen Sakalis (2015), "The Global Advertising Regulation Handbook", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 306-307. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCM-04-2014-0940

According to the International Chamber of Commerce, “All advertising should be legal, decent, honest and truthful” (foreword vii). The authors of The Global Advertising Regulation Handbook cite this principle, stated in 1937, to show there are a lot of years of history related with advertising regulation.

But this book in not only a review about history. The authors, Shaver and An, with the aid of several contributors, analyze advertising regulation in different countries around the world: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China (also Hong Kong and Macau), Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the USA and the UK.

Some of the topics analyzed in each country are:

• form of government;

• amount of money spent on advertising by year;

• history of regulation along with current operating regulation systems;

• if self-regulation, the role of public members in regulation;

• route/manner in which cases are brought forward to regulating bodies;

• advertising codes, if any, and how they work;

• industry position and code;

• specific regulation of advertising to children, health advertising and tobacco advertising;

• sanctions and control of advertising found inadmissible; and

• position of commercial speech in country – if any.

The idea of this book is to give an overview of obligatory laws and regulations as well as of voluntary self-regulatory guidelines related to advertising practice.

The evolution and changes in national control systems in advertising are also analyzed in each country. These contents are very well summarized, so the reader will find key information from each country with a good snapshot of its advertising controls.

The contents of the book are organized into six parts. Each part gathers the countries into five groups: North America, South America, the Nordic countries, other European countries and the Pacific.

Within every part, the reader will find chapters for each country. For example, Part 1 (North America) has three chapters for three different countries: Canada, Mexico and The USA.

In the last part of the book, the authors present the conclusions, appendices, an index and information about the editors and contributors.

The information in The Global Advertising Regulation Handbook could be attractive to advertisers, professionals, students of marketing and communication and any other person interested in advertising regulation worldwide.

The best advantage of the book is the summary of each chapter with a little introduction to each country, the past and the present of its advertising regulation and some particular types of advertising related to children, tobacco, alcohol, food, etc.

Nonetheless, the presentation of the conclusions is sometimes quite boring and rough to read. There are not any tables with comparisons between countries or information presented with bullets, i.e. information that is easy to read and clear to compare. For example, a table could help to compare the number of cases handled by each self-regulatory system by country, or bullets could have been used when talking about the forbidden products related with advertising in some countries. This could make the reading easier and more memorable.

The book promises to cover consumerism and its role in advertising as well as a particular insight in the culture of each country, but there is a lack of information about this point in some countries. Not all the chapters of each country offer these particular insights. Some exceptions are a discussion of Denmark’s cultural issues; The UK, with a Consumerism section; Australia with a nice reflection on Globalization; and China, with a discussion related to China’s consumerism and the interaction between consumerism and advertising.

Despite this point, in the conclusions, the authors mention that the information is presented in a country-specific way, which makes each chapter unique.

For Shaver and An, the notion of advertising as a type of expression is universally recognized and accepted. Similarities and differences between countries are presented in areas like methods of regulation, restrictions on specific types of ads and areas of regulatory emphasis.

For example, in Australia, self-regulation handles the majority of complains, while in countries like China regulation is government controlled. This means that in some places, the public control takes more part than the private one. In general, in most places, the two systems work in parallel.

About the restrictions on specific types of ads, to mention an example, in France, the cinema sector cannot advertise except on channels dedicated to movies.

When talking about areas of regulatory emphasis, in Denmark, for instance, the advertising to children has special attention. This point is related to some Danish cultural issues of the country, notably its value placed on family, especially children.

These are just a few examples of the information analyzed in the book. The reader will also find all the institutions, agencies, bodies or entities in charge of the different regulations as well as the specific laws.

By buying the book, the reader will obtain a very good snapshot of advertising regulation in some countries as well as an interesting resource for in-depth and future investigations.