By Sam Smith, Managing Director
At Clearcast we have a mission – to help get ads to air and keep them there.
The core of what we do and what we are known for is clearing ads by checking them against the BCAP and CAP Codes. Despite what has been a difficult year, we have continued to clear ads, sometimes at very short notice, in line with our service levels. We are also on course for a record low number of upheld rulings from the ASA.
As well as our core copy clearance service, we have over the years, developed extra services that help advertisers and agencies right through the production chain. The challenge of Covid has brought changes and improvements in some of those services which we will be keeping. Our additional services:
- Increase the knowledge of your team, so that you are less likely to hit clearance problems
- Update that knowledge on a regular basis, so that you are always kept informed of the latest rules, guidance and policies
- Give you expert advice on tricky work when you need it
- Give you feedback in fast time scales when timelines are tight
- Take the hard work out of administration or international clearances if you need it
We want to help you right from the start – helping your teams understand the rules, even when they change.
Our Training Programme is one of our best-established services and always gets brilliant feedback. Until March of this year, it had been face to face, but that has not been an option for the rest of 2020. So, we went online, reformatting the courses for Agencies, Advertisers and Broadcasters into interactive live webinars. We are delighted to say that the feedback remains excellent for our online courses too.
Nothing is static in the world of advertising and to reflect that we’ve designed and delivered our Vital Update webinar series, focusing on new rules and guidance over the past few years, covering everything from gender portrayal to Covid restrictions. These short one-hour courses have been popular – we ran our last session in November focused solely on Covid updates in line with the ever-changing government regulations. Both these innovations will be something we keep once normality resumes.
For more information or to book on, contact our training team and keep an eye out for our 2021 programme launch!
“10 out of 10. Extremely helpful and informative. All hot topics were covered off, in particular guidance on the current Covid climate, including really useful real-life examples. I’d certainly recommend it to anyone in the world of advertising!”. – Emma, Uber Agency
Even when you have been trained, sometimes additional help is needed. That’s why we have our Copy Development service.
Copy Development allows agencies to get feedback and guidance from us on concepts, creative and claims during the ad development process. It is especially useful for those working in heavily regulated areas or when the copy is complex, contentious or competitive. The most famous campaign Copy Development had a part to play in was AMV’s Viva La Vulva for Bodyform, which helped push the boundaries of what was considered too offensive for broadcast.
“It was super super helpful to know that we have somewhere to go with this idea rather than it being completely unacceptable as a concept! Seb is in great demand from our end! He really is a genius – can’t thank him enough.” – Charlotte, Saatchi & Saatchi
On-set guidance
On-set guidance allows agencies to have a member of the Clearcast team on the shoot to give feedback as the ad is being made. This is particularly useful when shooting unscripted material like testimonials or improvisation. Getting early and detailed feedback this way makes compliance problems further down the chain, way less likely.
You don’t just need quality advice. Sometimes you need crucial feedback at high speed.
We all know that timescales can get squeezed occasionally, and you need our feedback fast. Our Fast Track service launched in July of 2019 and has proved to be a useful service for agencies and advertisers when time is short. We provide the usual level of Clearcast scrutiny, but you are guaranteed a response within one working day. Submissions can be fast-Tracked at any stage – script, rough cut or final TVC. Not all submissions are suitable for Fast Track if the claims are very complex or technical, but we will happily look at any submission and let you know at no charge. Fast Track is now a popular and established service and just knowing it’s there is a relief for some agencies.
“The speed and service of Fast Track made a potential week from hell, a massive amount easier!” – Dan, Saatchi & Saatchi
We can also help make it more simple.
With new advertisers and agencies coming to television this summer, there are those who need a bit of help with the administration required to get an ad on air. That’s particularly true if you are trying to navigate international clearance and advice or delivery and copy rotations. – let our TV Admin team help.
“Working with the team of Clearcast has always been a pleasure, they are super quick, efficient and reliable! I was personally coordinating with Danny, who simply made the entire process so smooth. He was extremely helpful and was guiding me throughout with his prompt responses! We as a media agency totally rely on his services, without a doubt!”- Nidhi, Mediareach
And finally, we are now available Out of Hours.
Our new Out of Hours service was launched because we want to be able to grant requests for our services outside of normal working hours. We recognize that this isn’t a 9-5 industry, and sometimes it can be valuable to get our input in the evening or over a weekend. Initial feedback has been positive.
“We found the Out Of Hours service to be extremely useful. The process is very quick to arrange, easy to use and extremely convenient for fast turnarounds. The team did a great job in getting feedback over to us very quickly within our allotted time.” – Who Wot Why
We are changing the way we work to fit advertisers and agencies needs in an evolving advertising market.
We’ve always been there to make sure that ads are suitable to make it to air and we’ll continue to help you do that. But if we can, we’ll also make it faster, simpler and more flexible too.
If you have any questions about these services or Clearcast in general, email us here.
