Erin Bailey

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It comes as no surprise that the Office of Fair Trading, (OFT) has confirmed that on line marketing and PR practices that do not disclose the fact they include paid for promotions are deceptive and a breach of the Consumer Protection regulations, (CPRs). ReACTS has been advising marketers to beware for some time…

Does the  Bribery Act, which comes into force next April 2011, mean the end of corporate hospitality? If so it will certainly hit the media industries harder than most, and yet the ad world has yet to really get to grips with the implications of this new legislation.

It is not that the industry is corrupt or based on back handers but simply that the media world flourishes in environments of congeniality and entertainment. However it seems the days when Lord Bell, (the famous MD of Saatchi and Saatchi in the 1970s), boasted of spending hundreds on caviar for his clients at one lunch alone, may be unwise in the future. While the Act is not intended to stop a free lunch the penalties for infringing one of the four offences are severe, and likely to focus the minds of any board of directors.  There  will be the possibility of a maximum jail term for bribery by an individual of 10 years and a company convicted of failing to prevent bribery could receive an unlimited fine.

Draft guidance published by the Ministry of Justice in September has only made matters worse. The Guide suggests  that all businesses will have to keep records of the hospitality staff receive and hand out.

The Telegraph described the proposals as an ‘administrative nightmare’. While intended to focus on bribes to foreign officials the Act also applies to all British businesses, small or large. There is enormous criticism of the Guidance and calls for clarifications have been made prior to the Act coming into force in April.

Reed Smith support PACT (the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television) in its call for the MoJ to clarify when a payment may be in the public interest, for example when paying a bribe in a foreign country to gain access to areas needed to carry out investigative journalism. PACT even point out that in some circumstances lives depend on bribes to get journalists and film makers out of difficult and frequently dangerous situations. However other times the reality is more mundane but equally valid, filming in some jurisdictions will just not happen unless the ‘local wheels of business’ are oiled sufficiently. Try shooting an ad in some parts of India for example.

So what does the Act cover?Continue Reading The Twilight Days of the Free Lunch?

Governments across the world are increasingly under pressure from privacy advocates and some consumers to better regulate the use of personal data on line. Under Ed Vaizey’s proposed plan announced last week, Google and Facebook and other social media networks and search engines would be required to sign up to a new code under which consumers would be able to get redress if they feel their privacy has been invaded.

The UK government is in discussions with the ICO, Information Commissioners Office, about how to develop such a code. What this will mean for advertisers using social media is as yet unclear though Ed Vaizey likened this idea to the mediation service offered by the Press Complaints Commission, which is both worrying and perhaps reassuring since the PCC is not renowned as particularly effective means of redress for consumers but is totally self regulated by the newspaper industry. Thus we might be led to assume that the search engines are being asked to run their own such self regulatory body. Given the lack of funds in the public purse one can assume this to be the case. No doubt Google will argue that it already has means for consumers to complain and seek redress. The cost of establishing and maintaining an independent body offering a complaints and mediation service would be colossal and without funding it seems unlikely this idea will take off in the immediate future.

What would it mean though for website owners and major brands?Continue Reading An Internet Bill of Rights?