Someone recently sent me an Ofcom document called a stakeholder briefing from a few weeks ago. It’s about Ofcom’s ongoing review of its junk food advertising restrictions. Get in touch if you want a copy.

First, as a friend once said, ’stakeholders’ means something less than the public. Ofcom can talk all it wants to about citizens and consumers, but when it releases a briefing for stakeholders it means the general public is excluded. Not good. Ofcom CEO Ed Richards said on YouTube (in an analysts briefing) that there should not be a two-tier, unfair system of information related to Ofcom’s work … but his staff still sometimes do not seem to get the message.

Anyway…maybe the next Communications Act will define ’stakeholder’…

The briefing sets out Ofcom’s intended work plan for assessing whether the HFSS advertising restrictions are working, what the unintended consequences have been, etc. It’s a classic programmatic evaluation that should — but in many respects is not — tracking Ofcom’s February 2007 impact assessment related to its new rules.

I thought the most interesting parts of the document are these nuggets:

‘Advertisers are evading the spirit of the restrictions, by airing advertising and sponsorship in the names of brands commonly associated with HFSS products in children’s airtime.’

And…

‘Advertisers have (contrary to our expectations) significantly increased the amount of HFSS advertising and sponsorship in periods outside children’s airtime, at times when significant numbers of children may be watching.’

My take: Although it’s often said that rules have ’spirit’, I think that it wishful thinking on the part of regulatory organisations. Social norms, such as standing up and letting a pregnant woman (–or pregnant man!–) have your seat on the Tube, have spirit. By contrast, rules are negotiated, contested and enforced with the coercive legal authority of the state. It’s pretty odd for Ofcom to use legalistic, rule-based measures instead of softer, less intrusive forms of regulation and then talk about the importance of spirit. If you go back to November 2006 Ofcom really surprised the industry by including older children in its rules. Ofcom also took a tough line on the proposed 4th option submitted by the FAU and did not even really publicise that potential option.

Hardly surprising, then, that the advertisers are looking to the letter of the law…

I think, however, I have observed what Ofcom is talking about. Domino’s Pizza still advertises on the Simpsons and says they are the ‘pizza delivery experts’. The advert shows the back of a dude who looks like he could be making a pizza. Then it shows another dude running with a pizza box and starting a car… but they don’t seem to advertise actual pizzas. Which is a shame… because as a stakeholder consumer I really would like to know what’s on offer!

So in my household — one of the 70 percent of UK households without children — we cannot see actual pizzas being advertised during the Simpsons.