The Role of Advertising Standards Authority.

In the UK all advertising is subject to a code of practice. This code is enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority or ASA. This authority is a self regulatory organisation (SRO) and as it is a nonstatutory organisation it cannot interpret or enforce legislation (the law). However the code of advertising practice that it represents is largely the same as that in the legislation. The ASA is funded by a charge on the advertising industry and not by the government. The role of the ASA is to regulate the content of advertisements, sales promotions and direct marketing in the UK. This means that any complaints that are made about advertisements promotions or direct marketings are investigated by the ASA and they decide whether the advertisements meets the terms of their code. The code says, that before an advertisement can be published or broadcast, the company must have their evidence to back up all of the claims that they make. They make sure "no marketing communication should mislead, or be likely to mislead, by inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, omission or otherwise".