The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has issued a reminder to advertisers on how to ensure that their campaigns in the run-up to Christmas comply with the CAP Code.

In particular, advertisers are urged to “take particular care not to encourage excessive spending” or to “trivialise the risks of credit” so as to comply with Rule 1.3 of the CAP Code which requires communications to be prepared “with a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society”. The ASA highlights examples of some ads that fell on the wrong side of this rule.

Similarly, the ASA cautions against making light of using credit or downplaying the importance of budgeting, citing several social media posts that were found to have breached the Code because they encouraged the use of Buy-Now-Pay-Later products for non-essential items through “memes that joked about ignoring budgets or lacking self-control”.

Finally, advertisers are reminded not to take advantage of financial anxiety felt by some consumers over the Christmas period by, for example, playing on parental anxieties or “implying that credit [is] the solution to avoid social embarrassment”.

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