Advertising and marketing

How businesses market and promote themselves has never been more important. The right advertising campaign or marketing initiative can make all the difference to the success or failure of a product or service. Increasing competition means that these areas can easily become a source of dispute.

What if a competitor challenges your campaign, and claims its legal rights have been infringed, or one of the regulatory bodies says you have breached its code? What if you want to object to what a competitor is doing? If you get it wrong, the consequences could be costly and the damage to your business long term.

We can help you achieve your advertising and marketing objectives. We do not confine our advice to what our clients cannot do: we advise you on how to meet your aims within the applicable law.

Work We Undertake

Clearance work
We review and clear advertisements and promotions. In doing so we advise on all aspects of the relevant law, for example we have advised:

• a major bank on sensitive aspects of its advertising campaign
• on the launch of a major new food product in this country (including advice on trade mark, passing off and food and health regulations)
• on the substantial mail drop of a leading household product including the packaging requirements because of the corrosive nature of the product and trading standards implications)
• a political party on its hard hitting General Election campaign

To help you, we can develop ideas and produce solutions to overcome or minimise legal and other potential problems, advising on:

• advertisements which reflect on your competitors' products
• your use of celebrities' names and likenesses in advertisements
• competitions and sales promotions product mail shots
• ethical advertising campaigns
• political advertisements during election and other campaigns
  
• health and food related claims
• how to deal with the Broadcasting Advertising Clearance Centre, the Advertising Standards Authority and other relevant regulatory and trade bodies

Complaint work
If you wish to bring a complaint (for example about a competitor's advertising) or you are in receipt of a complaint and seeking to defend yourself, we can help you.

This includes:

• bringing and defending legal proceedings for libel, malicious falsehood, slander of goods, copyright and trade mark infringement, passing off and data protection infringement
  
• bringing and defending complaints made to the ASA and other applicable regulatory and trade bodies

We advise companies in the following industry sectors:

• banking and financial services
  
• newspaper and magazine
• publishing
  
• health foods
  
• consumer goods
  
• pharmaceuticals