IPA Responds to UK Government Industrial Strategy and Creative Industries Sector Plan

The IPA has welcomed the Government's Industrial Strategy and the Creative Industries Sector Plan. Advertising is a fundamental part of the Creative Industries, one of eight industry sectors prioritised by the Industrial Strategy as fundamental to the UK's growth. And the CI Sector Plan names advertising and marketing as one of the four 'frontier' creative sub-sectors with particularly high growth potential that Government wants to prioritise (along with film/tv, video games, and music, performing and visual arts).

Among the themes set out in the documents are: enhancing skills and accelerating access to talent to tackle the skills gap in the creative industries (including developing apprenticeships and skills training that recognise the needs of the creative industries); supporting the growth of creative clusters around the UK; supporting the export of services from the UK; reforming public procurement to enable smaller agencies to navigate the procurement process for public sector advertising services; and addressing the AI/Copyright conundrum. There is also the ambition to partner with creative trade associations, something the IPA has been doing and will continue to do.

Says Richard Lindsay, IPA director of legal and public affairs, "This is a really encouraging piece of work from the Government, not only because it recognises the importance of the advertising industry to the UK's economy - naming advertising and marketing as one of four creative sub-sectors that it wants to prioritise under the Creative Industries Sector Plan - but because it includes initiatives that we have been asking for. Those include the need to ensure homegrown talent is properly skilled to be able to flourish in the advertising industry, supporting exports, supporting creative clusters right across the UK and improving the public sector's processes for the procurement of advertising services. We very much look forward to continuing to work with Government and helping it support the growth of the advertising industry."