As we ring in 2024 (is it too late to say that now?) here is a rundown of all things Copy Clearance in 2023.
Over the year we looked at 24,740 scripts and 57,720 videos. Taking the traditional 30-second spot as the average length of a film submitted to us, that’s a total of 481 hours of advertising viewed by the copy team in 2023 – longer than three years’ worth of Coronation Street episodes!
And we’ve been taking care of business when it comes to avoiding upheld complaints too…
2023 saw 19 complaints upheld by the ASA out of 31 published rulings – an improvement on 2022’s 22 uphelds from 39 cases. We also saw 12 cases not upheld and 15 informally resolved without the need for a full investigation.
The most striking figure is that fewer than 1% of all clocked commercials resulted in regulator concerns under the CAP and BCAP Codes – an excellent reflection of our hard work in 2023 making sure that your advertisements are legal, decent, honest and truthful.
We worked hard to meet agency and advertiser’s needs with our clearance services…
800 delegates came to our training sessions over 2023 to learn about how our services work – with 100% of them recommending our courses. Our Training team went to Edinburgh in March to deliver our courses in Scotland for the first time since 2017, and our bespoke green training sessions have been held at various locations, including Channel 4.
We’ve been working on ways to increase accessibility awareness in the industry, including liaising with the RNIB and RNID to develop an Ad Accessibility Training course covering subtitling and audio description, to give agencies and advertisers the tools to create brilliant, accessible ads in 2024.
Our popular Fast Track service relaunched a super speedy 2-hour feedback service to allow us to be more flexible and responsive when needed.
Our Copy Development team worked on 115 jobs – including 48 meetings arranged with our consultants, seven out-of-hours clearances, and two on-set visits – helping agencies make sure tricky campaigns are fully prepped for the clearance process. Retail, cosmetics, gambling, and alcohol were the most popular areas needing their help.
We’re here for you in 2024
2024 should also prove to be a busy year – the Euros, Olympics and Paralympics are always popular events for TV advertising. The villa, jungle, tent, and Big Brother House are all set to reopen and areas such as gambling, alcohol and environmental concerns proving to be both popular and heavily scrutinised. Our clearance services are here to help get your ads to air and keep them there, whether that’s with copy clearance, copy development, training or fast track.
Until next year!
