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Kind: captions
Language: en

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In 2014, some British YouTube stars were called
out by the British advertising regulators

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for not properly declaring sponsored content.

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They mentioned the sponsorship in the description,

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they said "thanks to the company for making
this possible" at the end:

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it wasn't like they were trying to hide it,
but it wasn't enough.

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It had to be clear before you clicked on the
video, that it was an advert.

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In a world so saturated with advertising:
why was that a problem?

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Well, British media has some of the strongest
product placement laws in the world.

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Most of the rest of the planet, though?

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They don't really care. And the reason,

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as with so many things, goes back to history.

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Back in the first years of television,

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all Britain had was the BBC from Alexandra
Palace. Paid for not by advertising,

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but by a yearly tax on anyone who owned a
television. And that's still true.

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So advertising wasn't, and isn't,

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allowed on the BBC. In the United States,
though,

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they had commercial television right from
the start -- and a -- whaa! --

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a show's host would regularly interrupt their
patter

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to give a personal endorsement down the camera
for a better brand of umbrella(!)

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"Unless you're smoking L&Ms, all you can do
is imagine how good they taste."

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But in the UK, that sort of thing was seen
as horribly tacky.

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When commercial TV launched here,

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admags, weird half-soap-opera,

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half-infomercials, existed for a few years,

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but it just wasn't the British way of doing
things, darling(!)

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So in the 60s, strict rules were laid down:
advertising and

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content must never collide. No product placement,
at all.

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Which led to some things that Americans would
find very strange:

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our version of the Price is Right,

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for example, couldn't mention brand names.

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You might win a brand new car,

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but the announcer would never say what make
of car it was.

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"A 1.3 hatchback!"

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Teleshopping and infomercials existed, and
still do,

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but they had to be clearly flagged,

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on screen with a title, saying what they were.

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Were there dodgy dealings going on behind
the scenes?

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Did some producers get backhanders for making
sure

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that the heroes of their drama used a certain
type of computer?

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Almost certainly. But you wouldn't see, for
example,

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those heroes stopping for lunch at one particular
chain restaurant

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and emphasising how good the food was.

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"This Subway sandwich? So ono."

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You know how the American Idol judges all
had those big branded cups in front of them?

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They had to be blurred out when that series
was shown over here.

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Other product placements, like those in movies,

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or sports broadcasts coming from sponsored
arenas, were deemed acceptable,

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but the regulators generally took a hard line
on entertainment made here in Britain.

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That's what the folks who grew up in Britain
are used to.

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That's what the people making the decisions
see as the standard for the country's television.

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So as you might imagine,

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our advertising rules in general are a bit
more restrictive too.

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There is a thing called the Advertising Standards
Authority who write the Advertising Codes.

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Now, the codes are technically voluntary,

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but in practice it's as good as the law.

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Because few companies want the bad publicity
that'll come from breaking it,

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no TV channels or newspapers will dare to
run ads that break the Codes,

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and ad agencies, the people who make the commercials,

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don't want to get in trouble either.

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Because the alternative is the government
starts setting the rules

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instead of the advertising industry itself,

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and they'll make breaking the Code an actual
criminal offence

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rather than just something that gets your
advert pulled.

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Now, the rules have been relaxed recently.

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Provided it's flagged up with a tiny symbol
at the start of the show,

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some commercial TV can now include product
placements.

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But for advertisers used to the permissiveness
of America,

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modern-day British TV is still a shock:

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adverts can't editorially affect the show,
and

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they can't talk about how good the product
is. Also,

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you can't product-place food that's high in
sugar, fat or salt,

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and there's absolutely no product placement
at all within children's programs.

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The Advertising Standards Authority lives
in the building behind me,

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and the Code they write has hundreds of pages
of rules governing all sorts of ads.

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But there are two very important sections
for what we're talking about,

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and given the rules I mentioned earlier,

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they probably won't surprise you.

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Number 1: no matter where they are,

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adverts must be clearly identifiable as adverts.

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And number 2: you can't advertise unhealthy
food to children.

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So you might see why the regulators got a
bit annoyed at vloggers with teen audiences

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selling cookies in the middle of their regular
videos without any warning.

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Now, to be fair:

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the regulators hadn't actually produced any
help or advice for the industry on this

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back then, a year and a half ago as I record
this.

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They were caught on the back foot.

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And the vloggers themselves weren't really
expected to know this,

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it was the ad agency's job -- the client that
hired them --

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to check that they were compliant.

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And the agencies either got carried away at
what seemed like this new, unregulated world,

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or they were American and didn't know or care
about it.

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British TV is still seen, at least by people
in Britain, as a gold standard.

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We don't do those horrible product placements.

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Not on television, anyway. As for YouTube,

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and the rest of the internet: well,

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the rules are still being written.

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All of which is a long-winded way of saying
that

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my videos are open for product placement now,

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if you're a company: do get in touch!

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