The IPA has welcomed the launch of Wikiregs, a free multinational database of European advertising regulations.
The launch of comprehensive new website Wikiregs provides agencies and clients with a free, one-stop-shop for all statutory and self-regulatory marketing communications’ regulations on Alcohol, Cars, and Food and Soft Drinks across nine European countries. Additionally, the rules that affect all product categories – the general rules – are on the website.
This is the first time there has been a single, central source of multinational rules in multiple sectors. Being able to understand all the executional rules before and during campaign development, rather than after the event, brings obvious benefits to the campaign development process.
The website provides comprehensive rules, reviewed by the relevant national Self-Regulatory Organisation under a collaboration agreement with the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), and/ or by third party advisors, and updated regularly:
- By product sector and by country;
- From the Self-Regulatory Organisation (SRO) Sector and General Codes in each country;
- Content and Channel rules: what you can or can’t say and where and when you can or can’t say it, including privacy rules;
- From national laws that implement EU Directives, with the Directives themselves also available, and EU Regulations where they apply;
- From ‘standalone’ national laws;
- Expressed in English, professionally translated from source where necessary, with links to the original laws and regulations in each country.
Says Rae Burdon, Founder of Wikiregs: “I know from painful experience that navigating multinational advertising regulations is a minefield. With Wikiregs, agencies and clients should save time and money by avoiding the waste of expensive creative resource, the dumping of non-compliant work either before or after making it, and waiting for advisors to deliver opinions. This territory has been far too difficult for far too long.”
Says Paul Bainsfair, Director General, IPA: “Our congratulations must go to those concerned for bringing this website to market – a herculean task, years in the making. It is without doubt an incredibly useful resource for our agencies and for clients to refer to when embarking on any campaign, simplifying what can be a daunting, complicated and costly exercise.”
The website will develop to thirty countries worldwide and ten product sectors.
