Stories I wrote for India Today magazine.

The published version may have differed due to editing and layout changes.

15 Jan 1997
Ethics in Advertising
Vijay Menon

“Are you willing for the billing?”

S.V.Sista, chairman, Sista Saatchi & Saatchi, and immediate past (1995--96) vice chairman of the
Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) boils down the ethical dilemma in advertising to this
central question.

Ever since a boy recently jumped off a cliff and died imitating the bungee jump in a Thums Up ad, the
debate on limits in advertising has taken on a new urgency. Especially in a crunch year when
advertising billings have tumbled, media has proliferated, competition has increased, and admen and
manufacturers are increasingly desperate to cut through the ad clutter for a share of the consumer's
mind.

The industry's answer is unequivocal. 'Advertising agencies are run by responsible people' says Sam
Balsara, managing director, Madison Advertising. 'We know when and where to draw the line against
unethical advertising.'

A claim that was hotly debated at the first ever workshop on unethical advertising organized jointly by
the Federation of Consumer Organizations, Tamil Nadu (FEDCOT) and ASCI at Chennai last week.
'Consumers have been at the mercy of the sellers and the persuaders for the last 50 years' says
R.Desikan, chairman, FEDCOT. 'And increased competition among brands only worsens the situation
unless the advertising industry regulates itself.'

What is an unethical advertisement anyway ? The ASCI has a well documented code of conduct for
advertisements and it boils down to this : Does the ad lie, does it make fraudulent claims or does it
violate your sense of decency ?

The industry claims that in a three year period from April '93 to September '96, ASCI received 587
complaints and only 18 ads were found to be in poor taste. 'That's an average of five valid complaints
per year' says Balsara. 'Out of the several thousand campaigns that must've been released in that
time.'

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Activists are unimpressed. 'Who's heard of ASCI ?' demands Henri Tiphangne, lawyer and general
secretary, FEDCOT. 'How many people you know who are insulted by an ad know that they can
complain to ASCI ?'

To be fair, product manufacturers seem to be increasingly aware of the power of a misleading ad. 'For
every one formal complainant, there are 10,000 customers who've stopped buying the brand' says
Kartik Raina, GM (sales & marketing), Dabur India Ltd, makers of a wide range of OTC food and
health products. 'Unless your products can deliver on the advertised promises, you can't go to your
agency with a clean brief.' Raina claims that his company withdrew an advertisement for Amla hair oil
after their R&D scientists pointed out that the imagery of leaves falling from a tree suggested that the
product would stop falling hair - an unsustainable claim.

Not all manufacturers are as scrupulous. Desikan successfully petitioned ASCI that the advertisers of
the Thirty Plus capsules had made claims of nervous rejuvenation that were unsubstantiated by
research. The ad was withdrawn.

But ASCI codes can at best be confusing. In a recent campaign for 'Memory Plus' a memory
enhancing drug, chess wizard Anand Vishwanathan claims to have been benefited by the product.
But Anand was a chess champion long before this product was developed and presumably had a
keen memory even then.

Morality, another common flashpoint (remember the to-do over the Tuffs shoes campaign featuring
Milind Soman and Madhu Sapre in the nude ?), is very often a geographical issue. Notions of
propriety vary not just between the West and the East, often what is hip in Mumbai can be vulgar in
Chennai.

A recent Madison TV campaign for 'Whisper Wings', a variant of the sanitary napkin from Procter &
Gamble with liners on the sides to prevent leaks was initially shot down by Doordarshan Chennai as
being vulgar and suggestive of the private parts of a woman's body. It was only when the agency
appealed to the DDG, Doordarshan, New Delhi that the ad was released for airing in Chennai.

Obscenity, claims the industry, lies in the eyes of the beholder. Not everyone buys that argument.
'Advertisers justify obscene imagery by pointing to our heritage of Khajuraho sculptures' says
K.G.Rama, women's rights worker and professor of social work at Chennai's Stella Maris women's
college. 'Oh yes? Then why aren't women walking on the roads today dressed like those statues ?
Even heritage can be vulgar if cited out of context.'

Targeting advertisements at children is another contentious issue. The ad industry has no qualms
about child focused advertising and points to a recent Pathfinders survey that showed that purchase

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decisions of 60 per cent of watches, 55 per cent of motorcycles and 35 per cent of music systems--
none of them children's products--were influenced by children. 'A quarter of the Indian population is
below 14 years of age' says Mohan Menon, regional director, O&M. 'And this segment accounted for
sales worth over Rs 1000 crores last year. Children constitute a powerful sales force. Advertisement
did not create this market. It exists.'

Others like Geeta Ramasheshan, an advocate at the Madras High Court involved in civil liberty rights
are disturbed by this trend. 'Children have enormous pester power' she agrees. 'But in a country with
such disparities in income and living standards as ours, targeting immature minds to sway purchase
decision is unethical.

'Ah, says the ad industry, but if we had selective media we'd target our messages precisely to avoid
frustrating the have-nots.

That’s debatable. All advertising is aspirational and seeks to widen the market base for a product by
netting in new customers. Selective media addressing only a pre determined audience would be too
self limiting for a mass marketer.

But the deepest conflicts of ethics stem from tobacco and surrogate liquor advertisements. Cigarette
advertisements are banned from public broadcast television in India and in all media in Norway,
Thailand, Finland and Singapore. 'Advertising does not create new smokers' claims Amit Sarkar,
chairman, Tobacco Institute of India, an industry lobby body. 'But it does help switch brand loyalty.
Even a one per cent chare of the Indian market is worth Rs 60 crores of consumer spending. Reason
enough for advertising by cigarette manufacturers.

The anti-smoking lobby dismisses such conclusions. 'Smoking causes three million deaths annually
worldwide' says U.N.R.Rao, senior advocate, Madras High Court and anti-tobacco campaigner. 'The
problem is, the Indian government derives 15% of its revenues from tobacco. Unless governments
decide on what is ethical or not, we will continue to be subject to the artful persuasion of the tobacco
lobby.'

Is legislation the answer ? There are a plethora of laws already governing advertising (see box). Of
these, the CPA is the most potent legislation to combat an offensive ad. But clever people can and do
get around the law. There is, for instance, a total ban on liquor advertising in India. A fact that has
thrown up a booming practice in surrogate advertising for liquor. No one is fooled by advertisements
for soda water, mineral water, glasses or casks that are patently too rich in visual and detail for the
humble products they claim to advertise. 'Surrogate advertising works because society--you and I--is
prepared to accept lies' says Gautam Rakshit, managing director, Advertising Avenues. 'And it will
continue to work as long as you tell me that provided I wink conspiratorially, you are prepared to
accept that its okay for me to lie.'

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Which is why activists like Desikan, no great fan of the ad industry, believes that ethics are better
served by asking the industry to regulate itself. He plans to file a series of suits against manufactures
who make hyperbolic claims.

Detergent manufacturers for starters. 'We'll have a lineup of women washing identically soiled clothes
in different detergents and compare the results with the claims' he says. The Aha! may yet turn out to
be Uh huh ? 'The idea is not to penalise any specific manufacturer' says Desikan. 'Rather, it is to set a
trend in genre specific testing.'

More than legislation, such rebuttal of advertising hyperbole by marketing logic may be the best way
to make ads more credible and more ethical. At the Chennai ASCI-FEDCOT workshop, Dr K.G.Rama
used an advertisement for a brand of women's shoes that featured a leather boot placed on a mini
skirted woman's backside as a case study.

By conventional measures of advertisement effectiveness, the ad was striking, novel and was
guaranteed to clear clutter.

But was it effective ? Rama, a trained researcher, polled the ad among 186 girls in the 18 to 20 age
group across disciplines in Chennai's upper crust Stella Maris college, presumably part of the ad's
target audience. Five respondents liked the ad. Three fine art students said they liked the layout. The
other 178 respondents panned it calling it irrelevant at the best to denigrating at the worst. And most
damagingly, the bulk of the respondents thought that the product advertised was a brand of men's
shoes.

Ends.

What to do if an ad offends you

If you feel that an ad makes fraudulent claims or is indecent, you can complain about it to ASCI
Secretariat in Mumbai. While the 10 year old advertising standards council of India (ASCI) has no
statutory powers, it is a watchdog body representing advertisers, advertising agencies, the media and
allied professions. There is a good chance that the ad will be withdrawn, but the consumer will not
get any individual compensation.

If you strongly feel cheated and feel that the ASCI action is insufficient, you can take recourse to the
following legislation under criminal law : Drugs and Magic Remedies (objectionable advertisements)
Act, 1954; Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940; Drugs Control Act, 1950; Prevention of Food Adulteration
Act, 1954; Prize Competition Act, 1955; Prize Chits & Money Circulation Schemes (banning) Act,
1979; Emblems and Names (prevention of improper use) Act, 1950; and, Indecent Representation of

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Women (prohibition) Act, 1986. However, consumer lawyers are of the opinion prosecution under
these Acts are largely ineffective because each prosecution has to be initiated by an 'appropriate
authority', the prosecution is a long drawn out affair and the law is so biased towards the accused that
the consumer ultimately feels doubly cheated.

For quick redress, consumer activists feel that the first complaint should go to the manufacturers
directly. 'We receive product specific complaints by the hundreds' says Desikan of FEDCOT. 'And our
experience is that most of these get a rapid response from the manufacturer.' Failing that, consumers
can approach the consumer courts (there's one in every district) under the Consumer Protection Act
of 1986. With no court fees and a mandate to dispose a case in 90 days and implement the decision
in 30 days, redress in form of a reasonable compensation can be quick. 'The practical problem often
is to convince the three member bench that the ad violates norms' says Desikan. 'Very few
precedents exist for trying advertising centered cases.' FEDCOT plans to correct that imbalance by
filing a series of suits against advertisements making tall claims. The results from these suits will form
the data bank for judging future cases.

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