We are delighted that the Mayor of London Labour’s Sadiq Khan has signed up to our ad code that commits to making “every reasonable effort not to mislead voters”. We’ve now 6 London mayor candidates signed up including Zoë Garbett (The Green Party), Rob Blackie (Liberal Democrats), Natalie Ca…

We are delighted to be working with Full Fact in the run up to the various 2024 elections in the UK. Their latest Report has just been published and has lots of sensible recommendations including “the next government should legislate to end deceptive campaign practices” and to “introduce indepen…

Lord Puttnam, January 2024 “When, as Chairman of a cross-party House of Lords Committee in 2020 I was responsible for recommending the regulation of ‘fundamental inaccuracy’ in political advertising, I wasn’t necessarily expecting it to be nodded through, but neither did I think the governm…

On Tuesday morning Lindy Cameron, the CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre, spoke on Radio 4 about the ‘more complex threats’ posed by AI.  Prominent among the threats discussed was the one to voters from political disinformation (PD), as the upcoming election will be “the first in …

The truth.Analysis of thousands of ads from all political parties reveals that it’s in short supply.Electoral Commission research from 2019 confirms that “people were concerned about misleading campaign techniques from across the political spectrum.”Electoral advertising should be regulated so that …

The tedious spat between the Labour party and the Conservatives over the Rishi Sunak ‘rolled eyes and poor pint’ deepfake did not surprise in the sense that it’s a conventional political exchange with all the value of two bald men fighting over a comb.Neither were we taken aback by the epic hy…

The recent Conservative party retention of Uxbridge and Ruislip was generally attributed to their anti-ULEZ campaign. The campaign took many forms; one of the most significant was the imaginatively named ‘Stop Ulez Times,’ which looks like doing what it said on its ‘tin’: stopping ULEZ. It als…

This note sets out our views on the issue that has become something of an online debate after our tweet that we regarded the Lib Dem letter to voters in Somerton and Frome as a ‘terrible’ campaign.  To those who may have missed this edifying exchange, a reference to the campaign material…

We’ve had a letter published in The Times today. For those without a subscription you can read it below. “Sir,  Daniel Finkelstein’s article “Divisive political ads are just getting started” (Apr 19)  was a heart-warming read for  those of us who have spent years campaigning for the …

Recent Labour party advertising, in particular – to paraphrase – Rishi Sunak protects paedophiles from prison – has attracted much commentary and most of it focused on the subject matter of child sexual assault, the ‘ad hominem’ nature of the approach, its credibility and the disse…

Generative AI is already having a profound and lasting effect on the advertising industry and political advertising is by no means exempt. My outlook about its impact on “normal” advertising is positive. The possibilities are exciting. But I am filled with total dread about what’s to come as t…