The Advertising Standards Council of India, the industry watchdog that cracks down on misleading ads, has a new chairman in D. Shivakumar, group executive president, corporate strategy, at the Aditya Birla group. It’s a hard task keeping an eye on brands and their advertising in a market where total ad expenditure is over ₹70,000 crore. Vinay Kamath and Chitra Narayanan find out how the veteran marketer is going to execute his new role. Edited excerpts:

What will be your agenda as ASCI chairman?

The first item on the agenda is to build awareness about ASCI among consumers. We need more consumers to be aware of ASCI, and hence their rights, when it comes to exercising them against poor communication.

Secondly, the focus will be on strengthening our collaboration with government, regulators, advertisers, advertising agencies and media owners. Building a stronger ecosystem is in everyone’s interest.

Apart from this, the focus will be on ensuring we have better compliance in place by looking at the new-age digital medium and how it impacts consumers and communication.

What measures do you envisage to make ASCI a more powerful and responsive body — also one that erring advertisers will heed?

ASCI has excellent collaborations with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and Department of Consumer (DoCA), Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Ministry of Health (expert committee for HFSS) and AYUSH. My goal will be to strengthen the ecosystem and ASCI’s role in the eco system. We must recognise that this is a self-regulation system.

Will you dialogue with advertisers to ensure better self-regulation?

Advertising is an important and legitimate means for the brand owner to talk with the consumer. The responsibility for the observance of this Code for Self-Regulation in Advertising lies with all who commission, create, place or publish any advertisement or assist in the creation or publishing of any advertisement. All advertisers, advertising agencies and media are expected not to commission, create, place or publish any advertisement which is in contravention of this Code. This is a self-imposed discipline.

Often, in the past, by the time ASCI passes its strictures, the erring campaign/ad would have run its course. How are you going to act faster?

ASCI has collaborated with several Government bodies to make the process of self-regulation in advertising more effective. Our continuous endeavour is to make this process smooth and easy for the consumers. The introduction of the digital initiative “Snap and WhatsApp” has helped to raise grievances with great ease.

If the complaint is upheld, then the advertiser and its agency as well as media (if it was referred to in the complaint) will be informed of the CCC recommendation within three business days. The advertiser will be given 10 business days to ensure time-bound compliance with the CCC recommendation by withdrawing the offending advertisement or modifying it so as to avoid contravening the ASCI Code.

If a positive response is not received or compliance is not assured by the advertiser, within 10 business days as above, a letter from the Vice-Chairman, ASCI, will be dispatched to the Advertiser requesting their compliance commitment immediately, no later than five business days from the last due date for compliance, to the withdrawal of the offending advertisement or its appropriate modification so as to avoid contravening the ASCI Code.

For TV advertisements, this communication will also be sent to all TV channels and the Electronic Media Monitoring Cell (EMMC) of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. With this elaborate and efficient process we are doing our best to curb misleading advertisements and protect consumers from deceptive information.

Any ordinary citizen can file a complaint, right? Has the number of complaints gone up?

Yes, consumers can file a complaint against a misleading advertisement on the ASCI website or by downloading a mobile application.

Consumers can register their grievances against objectionable advertisements free of cost and with great ease by using ASCI’s WhatsApp number +91 77100 12345.

This proactive step by the Council empowers consumers to register their grievances against objectionable advertisements free of cost and with great ease. By virtue of ongoing promotions on ASCI’s social media handles, ASCI’s WhatsApp number has increased its outreach and contributes to approximately 15 per cent of total complaints received. This will only grow in the coming months.

Complaints against a total of 2,641 advertisements were received in 2017-18.

This increase in number is due to several initiatives put forth by ASCI to increase awareness against misleading advertisements amongst citizens.

Are you also looking at newer forms of issues with advertising — such as gender stereotyping?

We have a lot of stereotyping in advertising, some of it is celebratory, like the role of a mother as a unifier and her love in a family.

One cannot argue against that depiction in any way; it is universal. Some of the stereotypes are not applicable, like the role of a woman in society.

Sixty three per cent of India is made up of nuclear families and things are more equal than before in terms of gender role equality. I think a segment which will be targeted in communication in the coming years will be the senior citizens. Again, stereo typing could be a problem here. So we have to be sensitive and watch these.

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