D&I in Indian advertising

D&I? Diversity & Inclusiveness. The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has just put out a report “Mainstreaming Diversity & Inclusiveness in Indian Advertising”. It makes for interesting insights.
 

The heartening news is that India scores well on gender representation. Indian ads showed 31 per cent women as protagonists in 2019. The percentage has gone up substantially in subsequent years — 38 per cent (2020), 34 per cent (2021), 39 per cent (2022), and 45 per cent in 2023.
 

However, in contrast to most other global markets, India is quite a distance away in terms of celebrating the inherent diversity in its ethnicity and skin colour, according to the ASCI. The global average for different ethnic groups being featured in advertising is 19 per cent. It is as high as 39 per cent in North America and 20 per cent in Europe. In India the score is a poor 3 per cent. In the portrayal of diversity of skin colour, the global average is 27 per cent — a massive 54 per cent in North America, 30 per cent each in Latin America and Europe, but a piffling 4 per cent in India. To be honest, I am not sure I would agree with these statistics. There is surely an error somewhere there.
 

The ASCI claims it reviewed over 261 new ads that went on air in October 2023 (across 13 languages) to build a D&I snapshot, but from my four decades in advertising my experience is that advertising beyond Hindi channels these days mostly features local celebrities/models, local locations, local clothes, local customs, local festivals and therefore local ethnicity and local skin colour. Most brands today shoot ads specifically for the South. Ditto for the East. So one is not sure how and why the ASCI index shows such low scores, unless of course the weight for Hindi is over-indexed.
 

In terms of representing a wider spread of age groups, India is somewhat closer to the global pattern. Women aged 40 and above are shown in 25 per cent global ads while 16 per cent Indian ads feature this cohort. Fifty-eight per cent females shown are with lighter skin tones compared to 25 per cent males. Thirty-nine per cent female characters are expected to have a lean & slender body type compared to 16 per cent for males. Eighty-six per cent females in Indian ads are 20-39 years, as compared to 62 per cent of their male counterparts in the same age bracket. Thirty-five per cent female characters are 2.5 times more likely to be shown as young/very attractive versus 14 per cent for males.
 

A content analysis of ads in India shows that male characters are likely to be three times more authoritative than female characters; 17.5 per cent females are likely to be shown as sole care givers compared to 3.5 per cent males. Less than 1 per cent of ads overtly show LGBTQ+ representation. Less than 1 per cent of ads feature someone with a disability. Only 4 per cent of ads feature the 65 and above age group.
 

Women are nearly always featured in a progressive narrative, where they are generally in control, and/or part of stories that celebrate the new normal slice of life wherein roles within a home are gender-agnostic. The pie is divided as follows: “New normal” slice of life 22 per cent; firebrand/progressive 3 per cent; regressive codes 4 per cent; status quo codes 32 per cent; pseudo-progressive 23 per cent and not part of narrative 17 per cent.
 

The ASCI report also puts valid questions to brand handlers and agency folks:
 

Does your brand communication reflect the diversity of the people in your markets?
 

Does the communication feature a range of people that are representative of the cultural and ethnic mix in your market?

The report urges marketers to think beyond gender — age, ethnicity, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, body size, religion, ability, etc — and aim for inclusive casting. It also suggests choosing central characters from under-represented groups without the story centring around their identity — that could be a pathway for progression. Going micro, the report has more to say — (1) Show people, especially women, owning their own behaviour and having control of their lives; (2) Use beauty as a way to show personality rather than as a way to suggest physical attraction; (3) Bring alive personalities that are complex and layered.
 

Advertising has progressed considerably from the time I joined the business in the mid-80s. Back then I used to handle Horlicks, a mainstreamer brand by any count. The woman protagonist would always be a young mother in her early 30s, saree-clad (at 8 am in the morning at breakfast), with well-oiled, long hair in a bun, a very light lipstick — harried and hurried — with a naughty child, a generally pre-occupied husband and a bored mother-in-law in the frame. We’ve come a long way from there. 

 The writer is chairman of Rediffusion