One of the Seven Keys to Responsible Marketing is being message responsible. That means marketers should respect all their audiences by seeking permission, telling the truth, honoring privacy and avoiding clutter.
Yelling at consumers isn’t very respectful, and the U.S. House of Representatives has recently approved a bill which aims to limit the volume of television advertisements.
Eric Weaver at Tribal DDB in Vancouver calls it “A win for consumers, a loss for self-interested advertisers” and I couldn’t agree more.
But what do you think? Should the government regulate annoying advertising?
Comment below to weigh in.
Hellz yeah, because the industry is clearly NOT self-regulating.
Hopefully the govt is focusing on more important things like, say, jobs and health care, but hey, I’ll take this too.
We’ll see if anything has teeth. I’m still getting illegal fax spams, telemarketers who violate the National Do Not Call registry, etc.
Cheers, buddy!
I couldn’t agree more. I hate having to turn the tv down when the commercials come on. It feels like such a forced viewing to me.
I’ll be happy if they could illegal text message advertising!! I hate this new form of advertising. I’m lucky to have an unlimited texting plan, but some folks have to pay per text.
I think we need to make a distinction between “noisy” and “loud.”
Loud is based on physically measurable audio volume, and the government does regulate decibel levels in society. I’m for that.
Noisy is subjective. A noisy ad can consist of people trying to talk over rock music, in which the words are nearly indecipherable, but not be any louder than any other commercial. Some people might enjoy it – perhaps teenagers who play music at all times. That should not be regulated, since it’s freedom of speech.
I’m not sure if noisy ads are my problem. I do have an issue with commercials that are louder than the programs that they play after/before. This is far too common and I think there should be a law to force all audio levels to be even for a station. So if they have a live broadcast that is a little quiet, I don’t want the commercials to be “normal” levels, I want it to be relative to the rest of the station.