What is the Advertising Self Regulatory Board (ÖRT) for?
The European examples show that self-regulation provides a more efficient solution to the regulation of the details and norms of advertising practices and to the settlement of conflicts than legislation.
What are the main tasks of ÖRT?
- Elaboration of the self-regulatory principles of the Hungarian advertising practices
- Development of international relations with self-regulatory organizations, participation in self-regulatory forums
- Opinion on the rules of law related to the advertising practices – in respect of the self-regulation
- Copy advice for advertising campaigns as well as complaint.
- Coordination between member companies, conciliation between non-members upon request.
- Representation and dissemination of the principles and practices of the self-regulation. Representation of the activity of ÖRT and provision of information.
- Forwarding of societal needs and criticism to the advertising business.
What are the major fields covered by ÖRT’s activity?
90% of the applications received by the ÖRT contain requests for copy advice. The professional responsibility is reflected by the fact that independent bodies are requested to deliver opinion more and more often for the purpose of copy advice for one or another advertising campaign. Representatives of all the three parties are invited to the sessions of the Ethic Ad Hoc Committee. We firmly believe that it is important that the resolution should be made by the Ethic Ad Hoc Committee in quite a short time, which also might facilitate the work of the members and promote the success of the self-regulation.
ÖRT deals with social and economic advertisements. ÖRT may also engage external experts in the inspection (and in doubtful cases it may get in touch with its international partner-organizations).
In regard to the fact that the requests for copy advice opinion refer to the advertisements still being designed, we always treat the applications confidential. We guarantee secrecy and competitive neutrality in the course of the judgement.
In view of the short time limit set for the creation of advertisements we reply to questions at least within one week.
Both consumers and competitors may initiate complaint procedures. The maturity and sense of responsibility of the advertising sector is shown by the fact that the issues emerged in the course of complaint procedures so far have been solved. The persons concerned have come to an agreement and realized the significance of finding solutions to the problems within the advertising sector and within the framework of self- regulation.
The Advertising Self Regulatory Board monitors the advertisements by product category or media type, so as to identify any problems possibly arising and to proceed if it is necessary.
What additional services ÖRT can provide?
- Professional conciliations: clarification of advertising trends and ethical issues affecting only part of the membership (in respect of certain products or the media) as well as creation of professional consensus.
- The ÖRT plays a leading role in the compilation and modification of the Hungarian Code of Advertising Ethics in cooperation with the Hungarian Advertising Association.
- Professional forums: we inform our members about legal issues, the practice of highest authority and special issues related to advertising in professional forums. Our aim is to promote that even more precise and better advertisements may be created through the better knowledge of legal and ethical rules.
- Prezentation and training for the members: the self-regulation plays an important part in the instruction of advertising and in the prevention of the breach of the advertising code. We organize lectures in a time frame of 1 to 1.5 hours to review the field sensitive in ethical terms and by evoking specific examples we show the decision-making procedure followed in the ethical judgements.
