Lithuania to get advertising law

VILNIUS - It's been six years in the making and now Lithuania may,
finally, get its first advertising law - one that's in line with
European Union standards.

The draft law was approved by the government and will now pass to
Parliament for discussion.

The law regulates many aspects of advertising, including when and how
commercials may be shown on television. It also requires that ads
must be clearly understood by the public to be advertisements. Some
television ads, for instance, will have to include the word
"advertisement" on the screen.

Also, commercials will not be permitted during news broadcasts and
children's programs. Televised sporting events too will be spared
from commercial breaks in the middle of the action.

The most prominent feature of the draft law is a provision about
misleading and comparative advertising.

Arnoldas Klimas of the Lithuanian Competition Council drafted that
part of the law.

"The concept of misleading advertising is much broader and includes
not only misleading with an incorrect fact but also misleading in any
kind of way, including the way in which the advertisement is
provided. For example, when some information is omitted from an
advertisement," Klimas said.

In one case, a business that was providing phone consultation
services advertised its services in local media, but neglected to
mention that its phone number incurred by-the-minute charges, whether
a service was provided or not.

"We couldn't say that this advertisement was misleading under our old
law of 1992. And according to the new law on advertising, this
advertisement would be recognized as misleading," said Klimas.

This provision, the Competition Council feels, is badly needed
because of a lack of trust Lithuanians are developing for
advertisements. This, in turn, is hurting the economic health of the
advertising market.

"Results of sociological studies indicate that more than 50 percent
of consumers said they were misled by advertising," Klimas said.
"That's a very bad figure. The advertising industry is experiencing
such slow growth because people don't trust advertising. And the new
law on advertising will make people trust advertising more."

In fact, a recent survey by Gallup International and the Baltijos
Tyrimai agency said that 53 percent of the Lithuanian population
doubted information received through commercials or print
advertisements.

One determined opponent of the draft law in its early stages was the
International Advertising Association's Lithuanian chapter, led by
Raimondas Sestakauskas. Sestakauskas now has crossed over to the yea
side, and is fairly supportive of the law.

"I think it's great that this law is not so prohibitive as it has
been. This law has been discussed for many years now. It was quite
bad in the beginning. The bureaucrats are trying to adopt laws that
will regulate government legal structure to the EU model. That we
agree with. Then, we have a law about a very important sector of our
industry," Sestakauskas said.

Sestakauskas is most enamored of provisions in the draft law that
encourage the various components of the advertising industry to
regulate themselves.

"This law now legally agrees with self-regulation, which is being
strongly recommended by most EU countries," he said. "Without
self-regulation it's not possible to achieve good ethical stands of
advertising. Naturally, all branches of the advertising industry, be
they advertisers or media or the agencies, have their own codes of
ethical stands. These codes are not aligned with each other. They're
slightly different."

However, in the Gallup survey, 71 percent of the respondents said
they thought that advertising must come under the control of the
government or consumer organizations. The survey said that
Lithuanians in general did not trust the advertisers to regulate
themselves.

Sestakauskas warns that politicians could use those kinds of
attitudes as cannon fodder.

"Politicians are saying that people don't believe in advertising and
this is one of their arguments in trying to install all sorts of
bodies that will prosecute and will punish and will try to in a way
regulate the industry. For the health of the economy, we think we
need a very simple system of self-regulation which will solve all
these problems," he said.

Sestakauskas is also supportive of the law because it defines many
aspects of a murky industry.

"This law supplies us with certain clauses that legally state what is
advertising, what is comparative advertising, what is misleading
advertising, and other important terms. It articulates things in a
normal manner. It will say in simple terms what is what," he said.

However, as with any draft law in Lithuania, the real struggle is set
to begin. The battleground: Parliament.

"Now Parliament can massacre it as they usually do," Sestakauskas said.