On Friday (September 9), Srinivasan K Swamy, Chairman and Managing Director, R K Swamy BBDO, was unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) on September 9. Abanti Sankaranarayanan, Vice Chairperson, CIABC was elected Vice-Chairman and Shashi Sinha, CEO, Media Brands was reappointed the Honorary Treasurer. Other members of the Board of Governors are Al Rajwani (Managing Director & Chief Executive, Procter & Gamble), Benoy Roychowdhury (Executive Director, HT Media), Mr. Dev Bajpai (Executive Director Legal & Corporate Affairs & Company Secretary, Hindustan Unilever Ltd), D Shivakumar (Chairman & CEO, PepsiCo India), Gurmit Singh (Vice President & MD, Yahoo India), N S Rajan (Global Partner & MD, Ketchum Sampark), Narendra Ambwani (Director, Agro Tech Foods), Prashant Singh (MD, Neilsen India Region), Raj Jain (CEO, Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd.), Rohit Gupta (President – Network Sales & International Business, Sony Pictures Networks India), S K Palekar (Adjunct Professor & Advisor – Executive Education, Institute of Management Technology), Subhash Kamath (Managing Partner, BBH Comms India) and Sunil Lulla (Chairman & Managing Director, Grey Worldwide India). Anuka Roy caught up with the new ASCI Chairman for a quick chat:
On his new role:
ASCI is fairly well-known. There is no advertiser or agency of consequence that has not been told that their ad is somehow misleading or offensive. They all know because they have been hit by ASCI at some point. My real task I do not think is to talk about what is ASCI, that is known. The important thing to tell people is that ASCI’s decision is not made by the Board of Governors of ASCI but is made by something called Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) and what is more relevant there has members from the civil society. The majority of the members are from the civil society that means consumers activists, educationists, lawyers, doctors – they constitute the majority in CCC. Only some people are from the advertising industry. These people look at advertisements and figure whether they are misleading, offending and then they take the decision. So, they are the ones who take the decision. That is something I would like to take an important part of the agenda to tell people who adjudicates on passing a campaign and hopefully that would set the record straight because the general perception is that ASCI is being influence by the people in the Board of Governors and their mission is against one competitor because the Board influences the decision. That is something I would like to bring in front, so that people know what is happening here
His agenda as the new ASCI Chairman:
To talk about CCC. There are many things we need to talk about with respect to what it does. For example, when a mission is given, that is an appeal process, you can then get appeal. When the matter is very complex, you have experts coming in briefing the CCC members about the complexities, whether it is technical or a complex thing they cannot understand, expert is called in. Based on that, CCC members actually take a call. So, there are many things which we can talk about. And, of course we have regular issues like someone will take us to court; we will have to figure out what our strategy will be to defend ourselves. There are all these government bodies that are a part and parcel of us. If ASCI is finding a place in Consumer Protection Act then there is a lot work to be done.
Any other new initiative to engage the consumer, like the WhatsApp initiative:
The point today is not to get more complaints. We ourselves are monitoring the complaints. We have a group of people looking at all that is appearing in all important advertising categories to see whether an ad is offending or not. Even if you do not complaint, we will track those ads. The marketing of WhatsApp and all is more to engage the consumer but we have been tracking a lot more ads on our own.
On the Patanjali controversy:
Patanjali is taking ASCI to court, the court will decide whether Patanjali is right or ASCI is right. The fact of the matter is ASCI’s decision is not the Board’s decision, it is the decision made by people like consumer activists, journalists, doctors, educationists etc. So, the court will look at all the facts and decide. Advertising is a critical part of every business and is somebody is going to challenge them in running the business they will take them to court, it is a part of life and we will address it.