As the amount of marketing communications covering alcohol, including advertising, declined during 2020, submissions to CopyClear decreased by 22% last year, according to its annual report for 2020.
CopyClear is the industry body that offers a pre-vetting service for marketing communications related to alcohol. Pre-vetting is necessary to ensure that the marketing communications is in compliance with the strict self-regulatory code of the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) which states that alcohol related communications should be consistent with responsible consumption and in no way appeal to children or encourage them to drink.
A total of 7,030 submissions were made to CopyClear during 2020 and no complaints were upheld, according to the annual report.
Of the submissions made during the year, TV accounted for 473, down from 517 in 2019. Radio, meanwhile, accounted for 109, down from 240 the year earlier while OOH submissions declined from 2095 in 2019 to 643.
Elsewhere marketing communications on digital channels continue to account for the majority -54%- of submissions with online paid submissions accounting for 2,731 of the submissions while online owned activations accounted for another 1,374.
In her introduction to the CopyClear annual report, chairwoman Caroline Sleiman, director and co-owner of Coffeeangel (pictured above), noted that 15% of all submissions were rejected and that 27% of these non-compliant submissions were rejected because they failed to include Responsibility Messaging (RM).
“Our purpose at CopyClear, is to offer an alcohol marketing communications pre-vetting service, thus ensuring compliance with the strict self-regulatory code of the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI). We are very pleased to report that there were zero upheld complaints in 2020 from our users, a testament to a system that is working,” says Sleiman.
