A group has been set up to help promote responsible and ethical advertising in the Arabian Gulf region, and clamp down on the bogus or inflated claims made in some commercials.

The Advertising Business Group (ABG) was established this month with the purpose of self-regulating the industry and making sure ads are honest and truthful.

Some of the biggest global brands are backing the initiative, with their executives making up the recently appointed ABG board.

“As an industry we have to do more to promote responsible advertising through the use of honest, accurate and truthful claims and imagery,” an ABG spokesperson told Arab News.

“We will work to make every single ad a responsible ad… The more ethical our brands are, the more that they will be trusted by consumers and the more effective our advertising will be. Self-regulation has been shown to work in many markets around the globe over many years.”

The spokesperson said there is “an opportunity to improve the ethical standards” in the advertising industry. They cited the hundreds of violations in healthcare advertisements in 2015, as monitored by the UAE’s Ministry of Health & Prevention.

“The Gulf’s advertising industry has grown tremendously; the industry has experienced a 233 percent increase in GCC ad-spend over the past 11 years. And yet, the industry must do more to ensure that we’re doing the right thing when it comes to responsible advertising. That’s the aim of the ABG, to help make advertisements responsible,” the spokesperson said.

As it looks to promote responsible advertising, the ABG will look to define “a common code of best-practice” on advertising and marketing standards, and also make consumers aware of their rights by giving them the ability to challenge advertising which they believe to be harmful or untrue, the spokesperson said.
It also plans to work with other groups such as the International Advertising Association, which is active in the Gulf, in promoting self-regulation in the industry.

“Imposed regulations can cause industries to shift resources from innovation toward compliance. At the heart of self-regulation is the belief that such regulation protects consumers and brands without stifling innovation,” the spokesperson said.

“We will demonstrate that voluntarily established self-regulation can result in fair, factually correct advertising to boost consumer confidence in advertising versus advertising that misleads, harms or offends consumers and erodes consumer confidence.”

The founding members of the ABG include Mars, PepsiCo, Emirates NBD, Procter & Gamble, Facebook, Google, MCN, Choueiri Group, Nestle, Abbott Laboratories, Visa, L'Oréal, Beiersdorf, Omnicom Media Group and Unilever.