Every cricket season sees an overdose of surrogate advertising around alcohol and tobacco/pan masala-based brands. We asked Dr Bhaskar Das for his views on the ads for the March 30 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…
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Q. What’s your view on surrogate ads. IPL is back and as is the surrogate stuff – whether in alcohol or pan masala. They are legal, but…
A. In India, surrogate advertisements are done dominantly in the tobacco and liquor industry. This is a direct consequence of the ban on direct advertisements of tobacco and liquor products. Therefore to promote and advertise their products to the masses, liquor and tobacco found a way around the ban through surrogate ads. The banned product (alcohol or cigarettes) is not projected directly to consumers, but rather camouflaged under another product with the same brand name, so that whenever there is a mention of that brand, consumers associate them with the main product (ostensibly). This defeats the whole purpose of banning a category of products.
I have always wondered whether those who smoke or drink would stop smoking or drinking, or vice versa, due to non-presence or presence of such advertisements. In spite of the ban, both the categories of products are contributing to the economy and creating jobs. If an economic activity is legitimate, why not legalise it and create high entry barrier to consumption? If the issue involves health and moral issues, one should completely ban their production in the country. Since surrogate advertisements have been taking advantage of the loopholes in regulatory protocols and everyone is turning a blind eye to it, I don’t see any solution to the challenge.
Anyway, those adverts don’t have any impact on non-consumers like me, then what is the ROI of such advertising for growing a market? So let consumer/market use its arbitrage power to consume/non-consume such brands.