Avoid exploiting crises in ad concepts: Check if an ad uses trauma or hardship for attention, not genuine service info.; Google Ads' 'Sensitive events' page sets rules—verify eligibility per platform.; Ensure claims are factual and backed by ACCC standards; avoid false urgency or pressure to buy.
Image: Performance Brand Desk

Creative Concepts

Part of Brand safety in performance messaging

Keeping sensitive topics out of opportunistic ad concepts

Screen topical ad ideas for genuine relevance, accurate service information and insensitive use of hardship or emergencies.

Performance Creative Desk · · 3 min read

Before production, use a pre-production screen to decide whether an ad concept relies on someone’s hardship, an emergency or a traumatic event to attract attention. Establish the advertiser’s real role, the event’s relevance to its offer and what the message asks people to do.

Key regulatory guidance sources

  • ACCC – False or misleading claimsAccepts reports to inform compliance and enforcement; businesses may be required to back up claims.
  • Google Ads – Sensitive events policyPlatform eligibility requires checking current rules; title alone does not define requirements.

Separate a useful update from a news hook

A genuine service update may need to mention an event: changed opening hours, available assistance or a verified delivery disruption. Give people accurate information and its conditions.

A routine promotion that borrows a disaster headline to create urgency serves another purpose. Remove that hook rather than trying to soften it with a sympathetic image.

Google Ads has a page titled “Sensitive events”. Check its current requirements for the intended placement; the title alone does not state them. Platform eligibility is a separate check from whether the event is genuinely relevant to the concept.

Useful update vs. opportunistic sales hook

  • Useful update (approved)Severe weather has disrupted deliveries in some areas. Check your order for current service information.
  • Opportunistic sales hook (rejected)Severe weather is here—buy now before it’s too late.

Screen the proposed concept

  1. Whose situation appears?Identify whether the concept depicts people affected by illness, violence, financial difficulty, disaster or another sensitive circumstance.
  2. What is the advertiser’s role?Name the service or information it can genuinely offer now. If the connection is only topical attention, stop the concept.
  3. What does the creative imply?Check whether the imagery, humour, targeting or call to action trivialises harm, invents urgency or suggests a benefit the business cannot deliver.
  4. Whose information appears?If the concept uses an identifiable person’s experience or sensitive personal information, seek the appropriate permission and privacy review.
  5. Where will it run?Check the current rules for each intended platform and placement.

Identify the event, the advertiser’s actual role, the connection to its offer, the wording and imagery, the placement and the action requested. Ask whether the concept uses the event to inform people about a relevant service or to draw attention to an unrelated offer.

Look for a clear connection between the event and the service, with precise information and conditions. If an unrelated offer uses hardship or an emergency as a sales hook, or adds pressure to buy, fail the screen and remove the hook.

Check that factual claims about a product or service can be backed up. The ACCC accepts reports about possible false or misleading claims and uses them to inform its education, compliance and enforcement work; it can require businesses to back up claims and may investigate. It does not resolve individual disputes or provide legal advice.

This screen does not prohibit every mention of a difficult subject. Public-interest messages and genuinely relevant services call for a case-specific review.

Choose a useful response

In the fictional severe-weather delivery example, a useful update could state which areas the business can currently serve, what remains uncertain and where customers can check an order. If accurate, “Severe weather has disrupted deliveries in some areas. Check your order for current service information” gives people relevant information without making the event a reason to buy.

Reject wording such as “Severe weather is here—buy now before it’s too late.” It turns the emergency into a sales trigger and adds pressure to purchase.

Assign a creative lead to document the decision and an independent senior reviewer to approve the concept before production. If the advertiser’s role, relevance, claims or platform requirements cannot be established, hold the concept; a revised version needs a fresh review, and any override should require a recorded rationale and senior sign-off.

Record the event, audience, wording, placement and review date because context can change quickly. Someone outside the concept team can read the completed ad without the brief and describe what the advertiser appears to ask people to do; that check may reveal an insensitive implication, but cannot establish how all affected people would respond.

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