Press Release: Best Practice Awards 2019
15 October 2019
PRESS RELEASE: EASA’S BEST PRACTICE AWARDS 2019
15 October 2019
From avatars and artificial intelligence to research driven programmes and publications – EASA’s Best Practice Awards 2019 honour this year’s winners
Stockholm, Sweden, 10 October 2019:
EASA’s 2019 Best Practice Awards ceremony was held at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm on the occasion of its Biannual Meetings which brought together its members and stakeholders from the advertising and self-regulatory world.
For the very first time, six prizes, including 2 bronze awards, were presented at the European Advertising Standards Alliance Best Practice Awards 2019. Initiatives between January 2017 and June 2019 were awarded and the jury, composed of representatives from the advertising industry – Tamara Daltroff, Townsend Feehan, Ilias Konteas, Julia Quintella, Richard Saturley and Dagmara Szulce – emphasized that all entries were of high quality.
EASA’s Director General, Lucas Boudet, in his opening address, reminded of the background and purpose of EASA’s Best practice awards: “EASA is proud to hold its 2019 Best Practice Awards Ceremony. The Best Practice Awards were established back in 2004 to celebrate the work that self-regulatory organisations have done to develop best practices and raise the profile of advertising self-regulation,” said Lucas Boudet. “With entries submitted by SROs which are reviewed by a jury composed of distinguishes industry members, EASA’s Best Practice Awards exemplify the innovative and thorough work done by SROs to ensure that the Industry delivers and stands up to its commitments and ensures responsible advertising.”
The jury’s representative, Richard Saturley from World out of Home Organization who also presented the awards, highlighted that “The judges were really impressed with the overall quality and variety of the entries which made choosing the winners particularly difficult,” before announcing the winners.
Technology driven projects in avatar monitoring, AI and a guidebook on ethics take Platinum, Gold and Silver
ASA (The Advertising Standards Authority) UK won the Platinum Award for their Avatar Monitoring project. This initiative received much acclaim for its ability to capture data and replicate online profiles of specific age groups – to monitor online display advertising of certain restricted products – alcohol, gambling, HFSS (high fat, salt or sugar) foods and soft drinks.
ARPP (Autorité de Régulation Professionnelle de la Publicité) France received the Gold Award for its AI programme, subdivided in 3 projects: deep learning proofs of concept, innovation/R&D workshops with the advertising industry and development of a chatbot ‘Jo’. The project received high praise for its originality.
The Silver award was won by Werberat Austria for their ‘Dos & Don’ts in Advertising’ guidebook. This guide functions as an orientation aid and a compass for advertisers, media, students, teachers, and politicians covering all aspects of ethics and morals in advertising. The guide consists of practical examples that illustrate sensitive subject areas of the Austrian Ethics Code, based on more than 3,000 complaints from the population and around 1,400 decisions made by the Judgement Jury.
Dual win for Bronze as Sweden’s Ro and Greece’s SEE share a joint victory
The judges selected two projects for the Bronze award. Reklamombudsmannen (Ro) Sweden received Bronze for their book project ‘Regler’ which was designed to highlight relevant and highly topical questions on matters such as influencer marketing. Among other things, the book provides advice, guidance and clarifications to current and future industry practitioners on both the Marketing Act and the ICC Advertising and Marketing Communications Code.
Advertising Self-Regulation Council (SEE) Greece received Bronze for their work on stopping the display of inappropriate ads of carnival costumes for young girls in online stores. The project took 3 years and resulted with an end to unsuitable carnival costume ads in selected online stores.
Special Mention awarded to Spain’s AUTOCONTROL for promoting responsible advertising through a training programme
A Special Mention was awarded to AUTOCONTROL Spain for developing a Training Department in collaboration with other departments. The purpose of the training programme is to offer advice and training to current and future industry professionals in order to raise ad standards and promote responsible advertising.
Congratulating winners, Richard Saturley highlighted that “We were asked to rank the entries against a range of detailed criteria. However, ultimately we all agreed the ASA’ s entry was innovative, relevant and using for the first time cutting edge Avatar technology for regulatory monitoring. As such it was a worthy winner of the of the Platinum Award.” The ranking criteria entailed relevance, objective achieved, management and execution of the project, results and usefulness/transferability.
EASA Best Practice Awards are presented every 2 years to the self-regulatory organisations (SROs) which have most effectively implemented an element of the EASA Best Practice Model – a set of operational standards for advertising standards bodies.
Download this press release (together with a short overview of all 13 entries) here: Download
