Sales Promotion and the Protection of Brand Reputation

Clive Mishon

Chairman
Institute of Sales Promotion

Clive Mishon argues that it is the responsibility of brand owners and managers to protect their brand’s reputation – not their agencies.

At a debate in the House of Commons earlier this month the motion: This House believes 'to maintain a brand’s reputation, well-run promotions are more important than good advertising' was overwhelmingly carried. I think that the motion was helped by James Murphy, Founding Partner of the new wunderkind agency Adam & Eve declaring that 'we are all in sales promotion.' 

This statement clearly suggests that promotional content is prevalent in all media channels and the reputation of all brands, including the biggest and the best, is at stake if they are not well handled. Sales promotion represents a huge portion of expenditure from the marketing and sales budget. The era in which sales promotion spend could be separated from total media spend has passed. It is now a major provider of content across all media – particularly in digital channels and direct mail.

High profile mismanagement

We are now working in an industry where more and more people are involved in sales promotion at a time when less and less people properly understand it as a discipline. In 2007, the people at ITV and GMTV were two such examples that came under the spotlight when their on-air premium phone competitions were duly lambasted after exposures of mismanagement, resulting in significant fines being placed on these businesses. But the damage was more than just financial because the reputation of the brands amongst their audiences is immeasurable.

It should be remembered that at the heart of the CAP Code, that governs our self-regulatory system Clause 4.1 reads: 'Marketers have the primary responsibility to ensure that their marketing communications are legal. Marketing communications should comply with the law and should not incite anyone to break it.'

The ISP is there to help support marketers meet this responsibility with four, clear aims:
To educate marketers in promotions; to provide the best legal advice in promotions; to promote promotions by recognising the best and support the industry to maintain its self-regulatory system and avoid further erosion of this position by government legislation.

Education

The ISP is the UK’s foremost source of education for promotions through its:

ISP Diploma
ISP Certificate
ISP Motivation Diploma
Courses in Strategic Planning and Fundamentals in Sales Promotion

There are residential, in-house and distant learning courses that are available to members of the ISP that aim to ensure that no one ‘trips over the code’ for promotions and brings their brand into disrepute.

ISP courses and qualifications are recognised around the world and we are now seeing not only agency personnel enrolling onto the courses but also a number of brand marketers. It is clear recognition that a bad promotion can have a far more damaging effect on a brand in the eyes of the consumer than a bad ad.

Legal Advice Service

The ISP is the largest provider of legal advice for promotions. The ISP handles over 100 enquiries a month to ensure that those activities being run by marketers or their agencies fully comply with the CAP Code. It is sad but true that as more promotions are brought to the consumers’ attention as being non-compliant then the more enquiries our legal consultants receive – it should be noted that the number of complaints the ASA received in the first nine months of 2007 equalled the total number of complaints received for the whole of 2006, which in themselves were on average more than 100 per month totalling 1,399.

The advice provided by the LAS covers both UK promotions and those that are run in Europe and it is yet another area that brand owners are calling upon. So even if certain marketing professionals do not want to be educated in the art of promotions they know enough to turn to the legal professional within the ISP to ensure their promotions stay on the right track.

ISP Awards

The ISP Awards have been running for nearly 30 years and recognise the campaigns that are best in class and which often go on to win awards from around the world – the ISP Award being a requirement of entering international competitions.

The ISP recognises the need to work exclusively with other professional associations in the marketing sphere as sales promotion is an integral part of other disciplines. Hence, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), Internet Advertising Bureau (iab) and ISBA now sponsor the ISP Award categories most relevant to their sectors.

Supporting Self-Regulation

Yet again in 2007, we saw further erosion of the marketing industry’s ability to self determine how it operates as the UK government introduced new legislation restricting the role of advertising and promotions. The focus this time was on HFSS (High in fat, sugar and salt) foods, that came under fire in the fight to tackle obesity. This, of course, has a serious impact for companies in the food and drink sector and their ability to promote in the way that they would like.

The ISP is campaigning as a member of the Advertising Association to ensure that a positive message is presented about the marketing communications industry and ensure that the pressure groups (of which there are many – like Which!) do not allow these food products to end up like the tobacco industry where all advertising and promotions were outlawed.

In addition, 2008 will see a major review of The Code of Advertising Practice and as a member of the CAP Committee, the ISP will strive to ensure that this review does not result in more restrictions that exceed the will of the marketers and to show that the self regulatory system can be tougher that the legislators. However, it will need to embrace the area of online promotions that, until this point, have been largely out of remit.

So there is much to be done and the ISP is at the centre of many of the big debates. It is important that significant promoters actively participate within the ISP to support it and the marketing industry at large. There is more legislation, there are more complaints and the only losers at these times are the brands. ISP membership and use of its legal service and education programmes is the best way for promoters to ensure that they support the self-regulatory code and do not, as some have over the last 12 months, fall foul of it – ignorance of the code is no defence.