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Today (25th June) I had the pleasure and privilege of addressing the creative community in Cannes in my capacity as Global President of the Global Advertising Lawyers Alliance (GALA) at an event organized by VIA, an Amsterdam-based marketing network. It was particularly attractive for me, as it was an opportunity to board the Amsterdam Clipper, anchored in the bay of Cannes.
The subject of my brief talk was why advertising self-regulation is creativity's greatest protector. And what, you may ask, do lawyers have to say about creativity?
The advertising industry is navigating an extraordinary convergence of pressures: the rise of generative AI, evolving platform dynamics, and an unprecedented wave of new regulation across jurisdictions worldwide. In the face of all this, advertising self-regulation is not a constraint on creativity. It is creativity's greatest protector.
Since 1937, the ICC Advertising and Marketing Communications Code has set the global standard for marketing that is legal, decent, honest, and truthful, whilst simultaneously supporting creative freedom. That is nearly ninety years of an industry demonstrating it can govern itself responsibly and still let creativity flourish.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: the alternative to effective self-regulation is not freedom. It's statute. The nature of government intervention is to be slow, rigid, and blunt. When legislators step in, they rarely write rules that leave room for creative ambiguity or the boundary-pushing that defines the best advertising. If you want proof, just look at the new laws on the advertising of Less Health Foods, which have made a dog's dinner of food advertising regulation.
Self-regulation offers what statutory frameworks cannot: speed, flexibility, and industry expertise. Self-regulatory bodies can adapt their codes to new technologies and formats, from influencer marketing to AI-generated content, far more swiftly than any parliament.
Then there is the question of trust. When consumers trust advertising, they engage with it, and when they engage with it, creative work has greater impact. Self-regulation protects consumers from the misleading claims of the few bad actors, and in doing so, safeguards the creative licence of the many responsible advertisers.
As the scope of regulation expands into broader notions of harm and offence, such as gender stereotypes, there is a real risk of creative freedom being inhibited. A robust, credible self-regulatory system is our best defence against that overreach.
Our collective responsibility is clear: keep self-regulation effective, well-funded, independent, and credible. And remind our creative colleagues that the rules we uphold are not the enemy of imagination. They are its shield.
Freedom depends upon the discharge of responsibilities to others. Self-regulation is how we discharge that responsibility and how we earn the right to keep creating.
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