International guidelines on e-marketing

The guidelines cover advertising over the internet, through on-line and interactive services, and electronic communication networks including the telephone, SMS/MMS, digital radio and television. They have been updated in light of technical advances in the market since 1998, when they were last amended.

The guidelines, prepared by the ICC Commission on Marketing and Advertising, aim to:

• increase public confidence that marketing and advertising material provided over the new interactive systems is legal, decent and honest;
• safeguard an optimum of freedom of expression for advertisers and marketers;
• provide practical and flexible solutions;
• minimise the need for governmental and/or inter-governmental legislation or regulations;
• meet reasonable consumer privacy expectations.

Contents include:

• responsible advertising to children;
• respect for public groups;
• data collection;
• unsolicited commercial communications; and
• respect for the potential sensitivities of a global audience.

"The guidelines demonstrate the responsiveness of ICC to stay current with the fast-changing area of the electronic media," said John Manfredi, Chair of the ICC Commission on Marketing and Advertising and Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at The Gillette Company.

Oliver Gray, Chair of ICC's Task Force on Code Revision and Director-General of the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), added, "There should be no need to have more than light touch regulation in this area of responsible advertising."

"We believe that the new guidelines clearly explain how interactive services, such as those currently being reviewed in EU discussions on the possible revision of the Television without Frontiers Directive, are responsibly addressed by industry self-regulation," he said.

But unlike the UK's Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, which came into force in 2003 in implementation of an earlier EU Directive, the ICC's guidelines do not require that marketers have specific consent from consumers before they send unsolicited marketing, or spam, to those consumers via electronic media.

According to the guidelines:

"Advertisers/marketers who send unsolicited marketing and advertising messages via electronic media should have reasonable grounds to believe that the consumers who receive such messages will have an interest in the subject matter or offer."

UK marketers should also follow the CAP Code, a set of industry rules applied by industry watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Again, these rules, which also require consent, are tighter than those put forward by the ICC.

Louise Townsend, a specialist in data protection law with Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said:

"Organisations that are already complying with the Privacy Regulations and the CAP Code should not have difficulty complying with the ICC Guidelines, particularly as they do not require consent to electronic marketing. Reputable organisations outside the EU may however wish to adhere to them to alleviate privacy concerns."