Our new report calls for colour-coded scale on car adverts

Our new report on car advertising rules in the EU is released today, recommending a colour-coded CO2 and fuel economy scale on car adverts, and for the rules to include websites, TV adverts and new electronic advertising formats.

The European Commission will be putting forward its long-awaited new Directive on regulations for car advertising in 2012, and is seeking input into the process now.

We Are Futureproof has been gathering evidence and researching how car adverts can better inform consumers about the fuel consmption and CO2 emissions of cars for several years, and our report brings together this evidence, and the work of other groups, into a clear case for better rules for car advertising.

Our recommendations include:

Improvements to car adverts

A simple, standardised colour-coded label should be made compulsory on all car advertisements.

This format should provide a clear comparison between cars, and should be as standardised as possible across all formats.

Regulations for TV, web and electronic billboard adverts

When we complained about the illegibility of CO2 information on an electronic billboard site, which had replaced a poster site in a London tube station, we were told this poster site no longer came under the scope of the regulations.

The new Directive must include these new formats and its language must be ‘futureproof’ against the introduction of new outdoor advertising formats. New technologies and techniques should not be able to fall outside the scope of the Directive simply by virtue of their novelty.

In our report, we also set out some further questions we think need answering when putting together the new regulations. These are:

Q. Who are adverts targeted at, and who needs to understand the information?

Q. What is the best format for the information, and how are visual, colour-coded images best included?

Q. What formats will best work in TV, web and electronic billboard adverts?

Q. What classification metric will be needed in future as more cars with zero tailpipe emissions are produced?

Download and read our report here, or by clicking on the cover image at the top of the page (pdf).