Bolt Inc. Works With CARU
New York, NY February 11 , 2003 – The Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus Inc. is pleased to announce that Bolt Inc. has agreed to address concerns raised by CARU under its Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising (the Guidelines).
CARU's Guidelines state, in part, that products and content which are inappropriate for use by children should not be advertised or promoted directly to children. CARU's monitoring program picked up a full-page advertisement for Bolt Inc. that appeared in Nickelodeon magazine, whose target audience is children 6-14 years old. The ad was for a sweepstakes and it directed readers to log on to Bolt's official Website, bolt.com. However, the sweepstakes sign-up and the site's general registration process were limited to individuals 13 years of age and older.
Bolt Inc. informed CARU that the Nickelodeon ad had been placed by an advertising agency of a Bolt client, that was sponsoring the sweepstakes, and that measures had been taken to help ensure that no future ads related to bolt.com would be placed in media targeting children under the age of 13.
Bolt Inc. also agreed to implement a tracking mechanism in its registration processes to help prevent under-aged children, who have been initially rejected, from being able to go right back to the sign-up page and successfully register by changing their age.
p>CARU's inquiry was conducted under the NAD/NARB/CARU Procedures for Voluntary Self-Regulation of National Advertising. Details of the inquiry, CARU's decision and the advertiser's response will be included in the next NAD/CARU Case Report.
Members of the press who wish to see a copy of the decision now should email CARU.
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The National Advertising Review Council (NARC) was formed in 1971 by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. (ANA), the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Inc. (AAAA), the American Advertising Federation, Inc. (AAF), and the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. (CBBB). Its purpose is to foster truth and accuracy in national advertising through voluntary self-regulation. NARC is the body that establishes the policies and procedures for the CBBB's National Advertising Division (NAD), the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU), and the National Advertising Review Board (NARB).
NAD and CARU are the investigative arms of the advertising industry's voluntary self-regulation program. Their casework results from competitive challenges from other advertisers, and also from self-monitoring traditional and new media, including the Internet. The National Advertising Review Board (NARB), the appeals body, is a peer group from which ad-hoc panels are selected to adjudicate those cases that are not resolved at the NAD/CARU level. This unique, self-regulatory system is funded entirely by the business community; CARU is financed by the children's advertising industry, while NAD/NARB's sole source of funding is derived from membership fees paid to the Council of Better Business Bureaus.
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