D1 - Discuss the Legal & Ethical constraints within the planned campaign

When producing advertisements, producers have a legal responsibility to ensure all advertising is accurate to the product/service, legal, decent, truthful, honest and socially responsible.

Essentially, this means that adverts can't mislead, lie to, offend or harass their audience, as well as not encouraging any illegal, unsafe or otherwise antisocial behaviour. This is primarily enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK's independent advertising regulator.

Regulatory Bodies

ASA - The Advertising Standards Authority aims to ensure that ads across UK media comply with the Advertising Codes, a set of legislation written by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP). The ASA is responsible for responding to concerns & complaints from consumers and businesses, monitoring ads to check they're following the rules, conducting research to test public opinion and taking action to ban advertisements considered misleading, harmful, offensive or irresponsible.

CAP - The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing, known as the CAP Code, covers all non-broadcast advertisements, sales promotions and direct marketing communications. This includes my proposed bus poster and social media campaign components.

BCAP - The UK Code of Broadcast Advertising, or BCAP Code, covers all advertisements on radio and TV services licensed by Ofcom. This includes my proposed TV trailer component.

Ofcom - Additionally, all communications services in the UK are regulated and overseen by Ofcom, another independent organisation funded by the industries it regulates. The Ofcom Broadcasting Code must be abided by all TV & radio programmes in the UK, advertisement or not. The BCAP Code includes Ofcom's legislation in its scope, so my TV trailer must satisfy this as well.

Clearcast - In the UK, all broadcasted advertisements are checked against the CAP and BCAP codes by Clearcast, an organisation which must approve that the advertisements conform to them before they can be deployed. Restrictions or outright rejections are imposed on ads where necessary.

How my campaign will conform with regulatory requirements:

Conforming to the guidelines and legislation set out by the above regulatory bodies is mostly a matter of common sense. 

Firstly, the campaign cannot mislead the audience into thinking its advertising something else. This means that the advertisements should make it clear that it's for a TV series, specifically a crime drama and not, say, a romantic comedy. This is essentially done by conforming to the conventions of crime drama advertisements, which I will be doing to appeal to the target audience anyway.

Secondly, no content in the campaign can be offensive or unsuitable for a general audience. This is because much of the planned campaign's components, particularly the bus poster, will be fully visible in the public eye such that people of any age or level of vulnerability can see it. This includes violence, strong language, drug use, nudity etc. Although these may be included in the show itself, they will need to be omitted from the advertising material to satisfy legislation requirements.

Finally, the campaign cannot encourage, incite or otherwise glorify anti-social behaviour, which includes anything illegal or dangerous. The planned components will have references to criminal activity, as the protagonist is a criminal themselves, so I will need to be particularly careful not to present that activity as positive to avoid encouraging audience members to take part in criminal activity themselves.

Other Legal & Ethical Considerations

Copyright & intellectual property - As with all media products, advertisements cannot contain any copyrighted material or intellectual property without permission from the owner of the original work and/or paying royalty fees. For all the planned components in the campaign, original or royalty-free / creative commons material will be used where possible and, only if necessary, copyrighted material will be used with explicit permission from the copyright owner and any attached royalty fees will be dealt with accordingly. Foreign intellectual property should be easy to avoid as the campaign will focus on the IP of the advertised TV series and nothing else.

Slander & libel - Media products are also prohibited from making defamatory statements, which is to say a statement that falsely damages the reputation of a person or organisation by presenting something that is untrue as a fact. The two types of defamation, slander & libel, simply refer to whether the defamatory statement is made in writing (libel) or in speech (slander). This is a simple issue to avoid as long as it is actively considered, which I am doing so in the scope of the planned campaign. Since a real-world organisation, the UK police, will be portrayed in the advertising campaign, I will need to ensure that no defamatory statements are made regarding them or any individual. This shouldn't be a problem as the police will be portrayed in a mostly positive way such that their reputation would not be harmed by any statements made about them.

Performance rights - Performance rights refer to the copyright laws surrounding the broadcast or public performance of music. When a music piece is played publicly or broadcast on TV, copyright law demands that the composer of that piece is paid royalties. For my campaign, this would apply to my TV trailer as it will include music that will be broadcast. I will need to ensure that the music used either has no royalties necessary or are considered within the budget of the planned campaign.

Permission to film - For the TV trailer component of the campaign, permission to film will be required in order to publish recorded video from a given location. This applies to everywhere, including public places, as the recordings will be distributed publicly and for marketing purposes. Thankfully, permission to film is quite simple to obtain, with just written proof of permission from the land owner required to satisfy it. I believe that all necessary filming will likely take place within my own home anyway, in which I can give myself permission.

Violence & offensive language/behaviour/material - As well as being covered by regulatory bodies, extreme or offensive material in media is also an ethical concern to consider as it can have an effect on the audience of the work. In the planned campaign, the advertising components will be in the public eye and available to be seen by anyone, meaning that any material that offends / is unsuitable for vulnerable or younger audiences will need to be excluded even if they are not the targeted demographic of the series. For example, the series itself may contain violence and strong language, but that should not be included in the advertising campaign as children may see it on, say, the planned bus poster.

As such, any and all aforementioned material will be excluded entirely from the campaign's content, or at least reduced to implicit inclusion (for example through euphemisms) in order to protect young and/or vulnerable audience members who may be exposes to the advertising components. This also satisfies the safeguarding measures required by regulatory bodies like Ofcom.

Representation - In the planned campaign, individuals and organisations will be portrayed. Regardless of whether they are fictional or not, each is a representation of a real-world group of people or organisation. For example, a fictional male character from the series that is featured in the campaign may be considered representative of all men, even if that isn't the intent. It is therefore important to consider how any groups or organisations are represented in the planned campaign, as portraying them inappropriately could cause offense or harm their reputation (for example, if all women in the campaign were portrayed as weak and helpless then that would be offensive to women and considered completely inappropriate and sexist, likely causing public outcry). In the planned campaign, the main groups that will be represented are criminals / hackers and police. These groups must be represented appropriately, which in fact means a different thing for each group; criminals are widely frowned upon in society and the media, so in this case 'appropriate' representation would mean not glorifying them or portraying them too positively. For police, an appropriate representation would be one that is not too negative or harmful to police officers' reputations, as they are mostly accepted by society as a force of good (albeit saying that nowadays is somewhat controversial).