CODE OF ETHICS
IN ADVERTISING
Warsaw, June 25th 2019
INDUSTRY CODES
Appendix no 1 – Beer Advertising Standards
Scope of Application
Article 1
This Appendix shall govern all advertising related to beer publicized within the Republic of Poland or addressed to Polish beer consumers.
The scope of the marketing message of the beer advertising is determined by the definitions of advertising , comparative advertising and sponsoring contained in art. 3 a) – c) of the (further: “advertising” or “beer advertising”)
Requirements regarding the contents and form of advertising
Article 2
- All advertising shall abide by laws and regulations effective in the territory of the Republic of Poland.
- Beer advertising should follow the rules contained in the Code of Ethics in Advertising and the provisions of this appendix.
- The provisions of chapter IV of the Code of Ethics in Advertising do not apply to beer advertising.
Article 3
- Beer advertising may not use images, symbols, persons and topics, which can be regarded as offensive, derogatory or humiliating.
- Beer advertising may not cause offence to prevalent religious norms.
Article 4
Beer advertising may not encourage aggressive or anti-social behaviour.
Article 5
Beer advertising may not use or promote sexual promiscuity, consent to sex or nudity, nor suggest that beer consumption can have a positive influence on sexual performance.
Article 6
Beer advertising may not create the image of beer as a means of overcoming life’s problems.
Article 7
Beer advertising may not present beer consumption in circumstances which are commonly regarded as irresponsible, inappropriate or in breach of law, in particular before or during any course of action which requires sobriety.
Article 8
Beer advertising may not:
- present or encourage irresponsible or excessive consumption of beer;
- present intoxicated people or in any way suggest that state of intoxication is a state socially approved;
- encourage consumers to prefer a given beverage due to its ability to create intoxication;
- suggest that consumption of beer with lower alcohol content does not lead to alcohol abuse;
- present refusal to consume alcohol or consumption in moderate quantities in a negative light.
Protection of Children
Article 9
Beer advertising may not be addressed at people under the age of 18 years, in any way whatsoever, be it through its contents or the method of publicizing. In this context, it does not apply to beer advertising the content of chapter IV “Advertisement addressed to children and young people”.
Article 10
Neither beer producers, nor their representatives, nor their agencies may make any payments or provide any benefits whatsoever for advertising which is mainly aimed at persons under the age of 18 years and is meant to be publicly distributed in the Republic of Poland. This provision shall apply also to messages and product placement contained in films.
Article 11
Beer advertising may not:
- contain images of people who are less than 25 years old;
- use images of people or figures which influence minors in a special way;
- suggest that beer is essential to becoming an adult or to achieve success in work or areas of social activity.
Protection of Health
Article 12
Beer advertising may not:
- suggest that beer has healing properties or prevents illnesses;
- suggest that beer has properties of a stimulating, anaesthetic or sedative drug;
- present pregnant women or breastfeeding women.
Appendix no 2 Standards of Food Advertising aimed at children
Article 1
Food advertising may not be aimed directly at children under 12 years of age.
Article 2
Restrictions on food advertising do not apply to products which meet certain nutritional criteria based on accepted scientific evidence and/or national and international nutrition recommendations contained, in particular, in Appendix 2a to the Code of Ethics in Advertising “Nutrition Criteria to the Self-Regulation Concerning Food Advertising Aimed at Children under 12 Years of Age in Poland”.
Article 3
Any type of advertising is considered to be aimed at children if, in the planned target group in the media used, children under 12 years of age represent at least 35 percent of the group.
Article 4
Food advertising may not be carried out in any form in primary schools.
Article 5
No type of food advertising aimed at children may:
a) promote or present unhealthy eating habits or unhealthy lifestyle in the form of eating and drinking in an immeasurable, excessive or coercive manner, or promote a sedentary lifestyle,
b) discredit the importance of healthy eating habits, a varied and balanced diet and physical activity,
c) contain direct exhortations to children to purchase the advertised products through the use of such phrases as: “buy now”, “you must have it”,
d) appeal to the child to persuade the child’s parents to buy the advertised product,
e) mislead as to the characteristics of the promoted product and the benefits of its use,
f) imply that the product in question has some special dietary characteristics if all similar products have similar characteristics,
g) arouse fear by providing descriptions of violence or overly aggressive elements,
h) encourage the use of the food product in an inappropriate or unsafe manner.
Article 6
Within the meaning of this Code, advertising is not the use of a company or product name, logo of the company or product in educational campaigns aimed at promoting healthy eating habits and physical activity among children and young people. The content of such campaigns must comply with national and/or international recommendations on nutrition and physical activity. Such campaigns at school may only be conducted with the consent of the school authorities.
Appendix no 2a to Code of Ethics in Advertising
Introduction
This document defines the criteria for nutritional voluntary initiative on the principles for food and beverage advertising, targeting children under the age of twelve, published in media in Poland.
The proposed criteria were approved by the Institute of Food and Nutrition – Poland’s leading research institution, with which competence includes issues related to food, nutrition and their impact on health.
According to the Institute, it is necessary to take action to reduce the intake of fat, saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, sugars and salt, by restricting the advertising of certain foods aimed at children under 12 years of age and to promote reformulation of food composition.
In the opinion of the Institute, criteria established for the nutritional assessment of food products in terms of the possibility of advertising to children under 12 years of age, as a voluntary initiative of food producers, is valuable. This initiative fits perfectly into the current activities to reduce overweight and obesity among the youngest part of the Polish public and to promote proper nutrition.
According to the overarching principle expressed in the Polish Code of Advertising Standards (Annex 2 Standards of food advertising to children), advertising of food products cannot be addressed directly to children who have not attained the age of 12, assuming that these children account for 35% or more of the audience of the broadcast. This rules do not apply to products that meet certain nutritional criteria based on accepted scientific evidence and/or national and international dietary recommendations .
Nutritional criteria have been developed in order to clarify the criteria by which food products are to be advertised to children under the age of 12. Criteria will allow both advertisers and broadcasters to easily assess products for compliance with the self-regulation. Nutritional criteria are based on an approach on the distribution of food products in the categories using the threshold values for key nutrients. Such an approach reflects better the role that different categories of foods and beverages play in the average diet, than the use of a universal profile. This approach also introduces a distinction between different food products within a given category, and thus allows it to achieve the fundamental objective to limit the types of food and beverage products advertised to children, while promoting competition in the development of healthier options through innovation and change recipes.
Nutritional criteria contain ten defined categories of products produced or sold on the Polish market. Selection of categories is dictated by the need to maintain a balance between the simplicity and a consistent treatment of similar products on the one hand, and on the other – the need to avoid creating categories so broad that only a relatively mild nutritional criteria could be applied to all kinds of products falling within this category. In order to ensure both the reliability of the system, as well as fair treatment, it was necessary to create subcategories within most of these ten categories.
Common nutritional criteria are based on a set of “nutrient ingredients that need to be limited” and “ingredients which presence should be promoted ” (nutrients and categories of food). The system takes into account both criteria and is consistent with the fundamental goal of self-regulation, that is the promotion of innovation, change recipes and competition in order to bring a change for advertising of healthier options – than a system based solely on “nutrient demanding constraints” .
“Nutrients requiring limitations” – sodium, saturated fats and sugars – were selected on the basis of publicly available evidence that they are important from a public health perspective because their average consumption in the population often exceeds the recommended or desirable for health. What is important – in the criteria adopted nutritional “components whose presence should be promoted” do not constitute a counterweight to the “nutrient demanding limitations”: to be able to advertise the product to children under twelve years of age , the product must contain the required amount of “ingredients whose presence must be promoted “and also lower than the threshold value “of nutrients requiring constraint” and have the energy value lower than the maximum fixed for each category.
In developing nutrition criteria , the recommendations of the World Health Organization ( WHO) were taken into consideration to determine the nutrient profiles. In line with these recommendations, nutritional criteria should be subject to appropriate adjustment to the new research. Accordingly, an update in the future, will possibly also take into account categories of products that are not currently represented in nutritional criteria.
In the framework of the guidelines, there are categories of food products for which does not provide any criteria for advertising to children under 12 years of age.
This applies to the following categories of food:
1. Sugar and sugar-based products, comprising:
– Chocolate and chocolate products,
– Jam or marmalade,
– Non-chocolate candy and other sugar products
2. Non-alcoholic drinks;
3. Potato chips and potato-based snacks, including products made from dough;
This reflects the existing voluntary commitments of food industry and is a confirmation that such products will not be advertised to children under 12 years of age.
The proposed criteria do not apply to food intended for particular nutritional uses, composition of which is regulated by the Regulation of the Minister of Health of 16 September 2010 on foodstuffs intended for particular nutritional criteria based on accepted scientific evidence. Children under the age of 3 are not recipients of advertising, and their dietary habits are shaped by parents in consultation with specialists in the field of nutrition and care of infants and young children .
11. Categories of food products for which criteria, for advertising to children under 12 years of age when they are more than 35% of the broadcast audience, were not provided:
1. Sugar and sugar-based products, comprising:
– Chocolate and chocolate products,
– Jam or marmalade,
– Non-chocolate candy and other sugar products
2. Non-alcoholic drinks;
3. Potato chips and potato-based snacks, including products made from dough;
Appendix No 3
Charter for the protection of children in advertising
( Self-regulatory act – annex 3 to code of ethics in advertising )
Chapter 1
SELF-REGULATION GOALS
Article 1 The purpose of the Charter is to specify terms that should be met in order to properly protect the interest of children, in particular those up to 12 years old, in marketing communication. The terms are in line with the Broadcasting Act of 29 December 1992 [Dz.U. (Journal of Laws) of 1993 No. 7, item 34 as amended], hereinafter referred to as the Act, in particular with Article 18(1), (3) and (5) of the Act.
Article 2 The signatories of the Charter are aware of the fact that an advertising message may provide children with new knowledge and skills, positive values as well as convictions about the world and people, but it can also pose certain threats, the more so as:
- using Internet contents and watching TV, including advertising messages, is one of the main activities performed by children in their free time,
- using an image of a child in order to enhance the effectiveness of an advertisement can increase the probability of exposing young advertising audience to risks associated with both messages addressed directly to them as well as commercials using child images, but addressed to adults,
- the use of child actors in commercials intensifies their impact, especially on children.
Article 3 Signatories of the Charter will strive to protect children as addressees of advertising messages, as well as limit unnecessary exposure of child actors starring in commercials that are not related to the nature of a product or the concept of an advertising message.
Chapter 2
ADVERTISING PRODUCTS OR SERVICES WHERE CHILDREN MAY BE INDIRECT RECIPIENTS
Article 4 The signatories of the Charter shall do their best to ensure that advertising messages addressed to children and advertising messages that are not addressed directly to them, but, due to their form, place and manner of presentation, are watched by children, do not include contents that might have a negative impact on their development.
Article 5 Signatories of the Charter, acting in accordance with the provisions of Article 16b(2)-(5), which prohibit broadcasting of commercial messages
- that encourage children to sustain pressure on parents or other persons in order to persuade them to purchase the advertised products or services;
- that take advantage of children’s confidence in parents, teachers and other people;
- showing children in dangerous situations unreasonably;
- having a hidden impact on the subconscious.
Declare that commercials addressed to children due to their contents, form, communication channel and manner of presentation will not contain, in particular:
- contents that may pose a threat to their health or safety,
- scenes showing physical or mental abuse,
- scenes showing family problems (e.g. neglecting a child, a child acting as an adult, a negative attitude of a child towards adults, including parents),
- a message that directly or indirectly undermines the authority of parents and legal guardians as well as their effort put in exercising the parental authority or taking care of children, in particular that depicts the exercise of the authority or custody as a negative phenomenon, contrary to the child’s welfare.
- scenes encouraging conflicts in any form (child-peers, child-parents and child-institutions),
- scenes showing threat (e.g. dangerous games or accidents), unless the purpose of the presentation is to promote the protective function of a product,
- a motif of excessive consumption and a consumerist lifestyle as a key value in life, taking into account the nature of a message such as a TV commercial,
- a message that suggests, directly or indirectly, that fun and entertainment does not involve any responsibility and limitations or precludes such responsibility or limitations.
- discriminatory contents, in particular due to race, sex, nationality, religious beliefs or disability,
- a message that uses, directly or indirectly, sexual innuendoes, including the use of sexual jokes and a hidden sexual meaning of individual words, or presents a false picture of sex and a sexual relationship, exclusively as an element of fun and entertainment,
- an image of a child persistently extorting shopping and other decisions on adults,
- promotion of negative models of generally unacceptable behaviour
- promotion of products that do not meet the criteria of other self-regulations of broadcasters, in particular the “Agreement between TV broadcasters on the principles of distributing commercials and sponsor references concerning food products or drinks containing ingredients whose presence in excessive amounts in a daily diet is not recommended”.
Chapter 3
CHILD ACTORS IN COMMERCIALS
Article 6 The signatories of the Code undertake to obey, at all stages of creating and distributing advertising messages, the following principles:
- the use of a child image in commercials advertising products or services that are not associated with children’s everyday life and activities should be limited by means of a thorough analysis of legitimacy
- children starring in a commercial should be presented in a friendly social environment, especially family and peers
- a child image cannot be treated in a commercial like an object in order to tout products and suggest other children or their parents that they should buy it.
Article 7 The signatories of the Charter shall do their best to ensure that child characters do not appear in commercials in the following contexts:
- acceptance of social stigmatization of a person and taunting as a model of socialization,
- contents debatable in terms of education (associations with alcohol consumption, references to sex life etc.),
- extreme fetishization of a product as the only remedy for a child’s problems and vital needs,
- imitating adults’ behaviours that are not appropriate from the point of view of children’s development needs.
Article 8 The following shall be avoided in the process of producing commercials with child actors:
- any threats to their health or safety
- their exposure to severe stress
- using a model character in the narrative of a commercial that might ridicule a child actor
- exposure to contents inappropriate at a given development phase
- situations leading to a distorted perception of the reality, e.g. if very young children star in commercials having an extremely fantastic plot
- situations causing fears, typical for social commercials warning against dangerous situations.