Katherine Borrett

Blog: What you need to know about advertising PPE on the radio

The Covid-19 pandemic is influencing the nature of the ads we’re asked to approve and is clearly creating both opportunities for new business ideas as well as challenges.  

Restaurants and pubs are advertising grocery deliveries, supermarkets are telling listeners about the steps they’re taking to feed the nation and schools and universities are offering virtual campus tours and interviews.

Perhaps unsurprisingly we’re also seeing particular growth in the number of advertisers promoting PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). It’s a particularly tricky area as there are lots of regulations about what can be marketed and how. 

PPE includes anything carried or worn to protect the carrier or wearer, whether at work or at home, including face masks. All PPE marketing in the UK must be verified by a “notified body”. We ask advertisers to let us know their Notified Body number. A list of EU notified bodies is available here

There are additional restrictions to the marketing of face masks. If they’re suggested as being suitable for protecting the wearer from Covid-19 (even if this is an implied claim) they must be rated FFP 2 or FFP 3 – these ratings reflect the number of particulates that are filtered by the mask, FFP 2 at 94% or FFP 3 at 99%. Therefore we ask the FFP rating of face masks offered by advertisers.

Vitamin supplement marketers may also be keen to position their products as suitable for boosting the immune system. It’s important that advertisers do not make claims for their products without robust clinical evidence to back these claims up. Any such claims should be listed as “authorised” on the EU Register of Nutrition and Health Claims here. Advertisers should take particular care to consider the ASA’s Code rules on advertising vitamins and supplements here.

In fact, the ASA has recently published an Enforcement Notice relating to the marketing of  intravenous vitamin drips as a treatment or prevention for Covid-19/Coronavirus. You can read the notice here

These are challenging times for business, but for the Clearance team, as for the rest of Radiocentre, we’re doing everything we can to ensure it is business as usual for our customers. So if you’re not sure whether your ad complies, message us at clearance@radiocentre.org and we’ll be glad to talk it through with you.

Katherine is Senior Clearance Executive at Radiocentre.