IPA welcomes government's health advertising investment
The IPA has welcomed the government's decision to reinstate advertising budgets for health campaigns.
As The Drum reported on Monday, the government's freeze on publicly-funded advertising campaigns has seen calls to drug helpline Frank plummet by 22% and visitor numbers to the Smokefree website drop by half.
Those figures emerged from a Department of Health report and prompted health secretary Andrew Lansley to indicate that spending on health communications would resume.
Hamish Pringle, the IPA's director general, told The Drum: "As the IPA proposed, the Department of Health and the COI have taken the opportunity presented by the Coalition's drastic budget cuts to carry out the biggest 'test and control' assessment in advertising history.
"Unsurprisingly to the professionals working in advertising, media, and marketing communications agencies, the analysis of the data has proven that the dramatic reduction in investment has had a similarly dramatic and adverse impact on citizen behaviours, with a consequent net increase in societal costs.
"We therefore welcome the reinstatement of budgets for key campaigns and look forward to a much closer integration of policy and marcoms once the future of the COI is decided later this month."