THE two-year experiment in allowing television advertising of tampons and sanitary towels ends next month in as much controversy as it began. Advertisers complain the project has failed because of a tangle of moralistic restrictions imposed by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, limitations that hardly seem credible in the same country that has allowed explicit TV advertisements on Aids and drug abuse.
At the end of February the IBA will have to decide whether to allow sanitary protection goods to be a permanent feature of our commercial breaks. Although the IBA is unlikely to ban the advertisements, as it did after the last experiment in the early 1980s, the industry is aware that the authority is equally unlikely to relax the rules to any great extent.
Nonetheless, it is lobbying hard for this. Some leading brand advertisers do not even bother with television, while others continue to use it but secondary to their traditional medium, magazines aimed at women and teenage girls.
The IBA guidelines, drawn up in August 1985, read like a cross between the Official Secrets Act, the rules for charades and a Victorian Lady's Advice to Her Daughter. "Potentially offensive" words such as "odour" and "period" are out; so are shots of unwrapped towels or tampons, although pack shots are allowed; all visual treatment must be "tasteful and restrained" and advertisements should do nothing "to cause embarrassment or undermine individual confidence in personal hygiene standards".
To add insult to injury, advertising is restricted to Channel 4, cutting off manufacturers from the mass lower-income audiences ITV can deliver. These restrictions also make it difficult to address directly the core target 10-to-14 age group.
This audience also remains elusive because of a guideline that discourages the portraying of girls under the ages of 14 or 15. The best that advertisers can hope for from the "glamorous life" advertisements they end up with is that they will persuade young girls to aspire to be like their older sisters.
It is hardly surprising that manufacturers spent only ú1.09m on television air-time last year compared with the ú2.95m splurged in magazines and newspapers. The market for tampons and sanitary towels is estimated to be worth ú140m a year-the largest toiletries market in Britain.
One leading brand, Dr White's, pulled out of television after the first six months of the experiment. "We advertised quite heavily and it helped gain brand awareness," said Jenny Blakelock, Dr White's account director at the Bartle Bogle Hegarty agency. "But it was very difficult to say how the product was different from the others and you couldn't build up audience coverage because of the time-buying restrictions."
What annoys Blakelock and other account directors is that the smart, witty and explicit ideas their creative teams produce for print are taboo on the small screen. The arresting Dr White's line that asks: "Have you ever wondered how men would carry on if they had periods?" is strictly off limits for television, as is Tampax's use of diagrams or textual reference to applicators and methods of use.
Lil-lets, like Dr White's, a Smith & Nephew product, is another brand to shun television. After a year away from all advertising, it has just launched a campaign on the familiar "catch 'em young and keep 'em for life" battlefields of magazines such as Jackie, Patches, Blue Jeans and My Guy. Even agencies still advertising on television find themselves weighing up the benefits. "We've not quite reached the point of advising the client not to advertise," said Mano Chandy, the senior account manager for Tampax at Colmans RSCG, "but we may soon be asking ourselves whether it's worth investing so much money when we have our hands tied behind our back."
It seems unlikely that the IBA will feel inclined or able to untie those hands. Advertising provokes the largest volume of mail, relative to the small amount of space it occupies on television, that the authority receives on any product. Most is from older women embarrassed about watching such advertisements in mixed company. Letters tend to run two-to-one against the commercials.
Whether the IBA should be giving so much weight to its correspondents is questionable. Its market research has shown that the level of anxiety among the larger population is lower than among the letter writers. It also knows that the current restrictions create a genre of commercials that is mostly patronising to women and puritanically archaic compared with standards abroad, particularly in Sweden and the US.
.lcAdverts for sanitary products cannot appear before the nine o'clock watershed. Is there any reason why children should be shielded from this type of information?
