What Clearcast and the CAA actually check

Broadcast advertising in the UK is pre-approved on behalf of the major broadcasters by Clearcast before it can air, against the broadcast advertising code. Cinema advertising is cleared separately, by the Cinema Advertising Association, which also issues an age rating determining which certificate films the advert may accompany.

They are not interchangeable and passing one does not imply the other. A film cleared for television may still attract a cinema rating that restricts its pairing, and a cinema advert is delivered as a different master entirely.

The practical consequence is planning. Two clearance processes on two timelines, both of which sit in front of the flight date, is the reason a campaign that has to be live in ten days usually cannot include either channel.

Objective and superlative claims need documentary substantiation. This covers the obvious ones — best, number one, leading — and also comparative claims about competitors and specific quantified assertions about performance.

The substantiation has to exist and has to be produceable. A belief that the claim is true, however well founded, is not evidence, and the clearance body will ask for the document rather than assess the plausibility.

The efficient way to handle this is to check at the scripting stage. A flagged claim in a script costs an edit; the same claim in a finished film costs a reshoot. AdBuyMCP's pre-check finds superlative claims and names the rule beside each one before anything is commissioned — and states explicitly that it cannot read a substantiation document and does not assess evidence quality. Where you declare that you hold evidence, both the claim and the declaration stay on the record for the body that actually decides.

Medicines, medical devices, treatments and health claims are governed by their own provisions and are the most restrictive category in the codes. Evidence requirements are high and unsubstantiated efficacy claims are routinely refused outright rather than negotiated.

Adjacent categories carry their own constraints: alcohol, gambling and financial products all have rules governing both what may be said and where it may be placed, which means a clearance issue in these categories can become a media issue.

For anything in these categories the sensible sequence is to establish what can be said before writing anything, rather than writing what you want to say and discovering the constraint at clearance.

Cinema copy containing strong language attracts a rating that restricts it to 15 and 18 certificate films. That sounds like a creative constraint and is actually a media one: it changes which films you can sit beside, which changes the audience you reach, which can invalidate the venue and film package the plan was built on.

The order of operations matters. If the media plan assumed a family-film package and the copy attracts a 15 rating, the plan has to be rebuilt rather than the copy adjusted at the margin.

This is the strongest argument for running the clearance pre-check at the scripting stage rather than at delivery. The information is cheap to act on early and expensive to act on late.