When advertising products designed for babies and children, it’s crucial to ensure that your marketing practices are not only compliant with the CAP Code but also reflect the highest standards for safety, transparency and ethical responsibility. For any advertising uncertainties around baby and toddler products, make sure you do your homework and baby-proof your content with this informative Insight!
Sleeping like a baby
When advertising products related to babies and sleep - and wanting to highlight any safety features for those products - it’s important to remember that there are NHS guidelines that are intended to help minimise the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
The ASA will take this guidance into account when assessing complaints about baby sleep and safety, and whether the content is likely to condone or encourage an unsafe practice. A website product page for a baby elephant hug pillow included various images of the product, one of which featured a sleeping infant lying on their side between the elephant’s legs while cuddling it. These were both unsafe sleep practices associated with SIDS, which meant that the ad encouraged an unsafe practice.
The ad also stated that parents shouldn’t leave their babies unsupervised, but this was unlikely to override the overall impression of the ad. Using claims such as “safe sleep” when advertising such products is also likely to be problematic, even in the absence of an image showing it being used.
In addition, ads shouldn’t suggest that a product has been given a distinct safety certification or that any product testing has been conducted to a safety standard established as being relevant to the specific product when that isn’t actually the case.
E is for Efficacy
Don’t forget that marketers need to hold adequate and robust documentary evidence to back up any objective claims that they make in their advertising. In the absence of adequate substantiation, a claim is likely to mislead.
This goes for claims to "nourish" a baby's skin microbiome in the context of bathtime, but also any claims about treating conditions or afflictions associated specifically with babies, or pregnancy and childbirth.
A paid-for Instagram ad for a feeding bottle that claimed to prevent colic (on the basis that it removed air from baby’s milk) was found to have breached the Code because the evidence provided did not sufficiently substantiate the efficacy claims for the product.
Similarly, a website claiming to treat various health conditions, including those in babies, via osteopathy and cranial osteopathy treatments was problematic for the same reasons. For guidance on osteopathy specifically you can find a more detailed breakdown of acceptable claims via the ASA review and guidance for marketing claims for pregnant women, children and babies.
Is Green your favourite colour?
If you want to showcase your green credentials or environmental benefits of your baby products, you’ll want to be aware of some of the key requirements when it comes to making environmental claims:
- The basis of environmental claims must be made clear.
- Absolute claims (for example “eco-friendly”, “100% green”) will require a high level of evidence to substantiate them.
- Claims such as “greener” or “friendlier” can be justified if the advertised product provided a total environmental benefit over that of the advertiser’s previous product or competitor products and the basis of the comparison is clear.
- Marketers must base environmental claims on the full life cycle of the advertised product, unless the marketing communication states otherwise, and must make clear the limits of the life cycle.
You, therefore, must ensure that you have evidence that a baby wipe will biodegradable within 15 days in all conditions, and avoid suggesting that it will not have any negative impact on the environment, if that isn’t the case. As a side note, comparative claims with identifiable competing products also need to be verifiable.
You can find lots of guidance on the environment on our dedicated Green Claims page.
Pre-school’s out
That’s home time, but if you feel like you’re about to have a “threenager” level breakdown in the face of this information, contact the Copy Advice team for guidance!
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