By A Correspondent
During the month of October 2019, ASCI investigated complaints against 344 advertisements, of which 80 advertisements were withdrawn by the advertisers on receipt of communication from ASCI. The independent Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) of ASCI evaluated 264 advertisements, of which complaints against 137 advertisements were upheld. Of these 137 advertisements, 89 belonged to the education sector, 29 belonged to the healthcare sector, four to personal care, two to the food & beverages sector, and 13 were from the ‘others’ category.
In the CCC deliberations, the most common reason for upholding complaints was that the advertisements were misleading and exploited consumers’ lack of knowledge. This was followed by violations of ASCI Guidelines for Advertising of Educational Institutions and Programmes. The other reasons for complaints to be upheld were superlative claims and unsubstantiated claims of having won awards.
Among various advertisements that were examined, the CCC observed that a top cricketer celebrity was endorsing ‘Instant payment’ claim being made by a well-known online platform for sale of second hand cars. An international automotive company, in their radio ad implied that consumers should not care for traffic rules hence showing a complete disregard for road safety. In the personal care category, a renowned personal care company founded by a beauty expert, mentioned SPF values that they could not substantiate by providing in vivo support data. A widely used sanitary napkin brand advertised its product to have long lasting cooling effect, which was unsubstantiated. Advertisements by hospitals offering IVF treatments were pulled up for making misleading claims regarding their success rates. An internet restaurant company’s claim of being the ‘World’s largest internet restaurant company’ was considered to be misleading in absence of relevant verifiable support data.
The CCC also came across a significant number of advertisement pertaining to the education sector with the advertisers making unsubstantiated and superlative claims of being the most trusted, No. 1 or winning awards.
Said Rohit Gupta, Chairman, ASCI: “Building on the momentum of the fine work done by the ASCI Secretariat in the past few years, for the year 2020 our resolve is to further strengthen the advertising ecosystem. This would be by means of new initiatives, enhanced processes and new guidelines that we plan to roll out in the coming months. These initiatives would not only benefit consumers but would also result in enhanced participation of industry members in effectively practising self-regulation in advertising.”
Welspun India has launched a digital campaign to raise awareness around the decreasing groundwater levels across the country.
Despite the volume of new products on display, CES is not really about shopping for gadgets anymore, and hasn’t been for a while. Over the past five years CES has been overtaken by the less sexy – yet much more significant – enabling technologies which themselves have been developed over many preceding years. The resulting software and connectivity that drives interoperability between devices, access to cloud computing resources and massive data storage along with improvements in battery life are now central to new consumer experiences and service layers, even if they aren’t always easy to demonstrate in a booth or a press release.
So here’s what Acharya has said in the press release: “There is a regular churn which is there in all organisations as talent seeks newer experiences – we have seen enough cases even in recent times where people move from advertising to start-ups, from media to marketing, from broadcasting to platform companies and such. And some of course to competition. That’s the nature of the market today. It’s unfortunate that some sections of media are trying to sensationalise routine moves. We continue to do great work, stay focussed, deliver on all fronts.”
