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The office is cluttered and the staff look tired. Allen Colaco, secretary general at the Mumbai-headquartered Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) says that since introducing the National Advertising Monitoring Service (NAMS), which basically looks for misleading ads daily in print and television, the work has doubled at the secretariat.
The reason is simple, he says. "With a monitoring service in place (it came into effect April last year following a tie-up with TAM), we can now actually see how many violations of the ASCI Code are happening."
On an average, NAMS monitors over 10,000 print ads and over 350 television ads each week. This is across publications and television channels in the country. On a monthly basis therefore, NAMS monitors nearly 45,000 print ads and nearly 1,500 TV ads.
The result of all this work is that the number of ads complained against has risen sharply in the last one year. Colaco says that the objective of a self-regulatory body such as ASCI is to get more and more violations out in the open which is possible when complaints against an ad go up.
Consider this: Before NAMS was introduced the number of ads complained against would hover in the region of about 175 a year. But in the first nine months of the current fiscal, the number of ads complained against stood at 287. By the end of this financial year, Colaco says that the figure should touch nearly 500. "This is the first time that we will see so many ads against whom complaints have been received in a single year," says Colaco.
These complaints come from a cross section of people including lay consumers, activist bodies and the industry.
But the proportion of complaints from lay consumers as against activist bodies and the industry still remains low despite ASCI's efforts encouraging consumers to come forward and voice their opinion about misleading ads. This drive has seen the body set up an online complaint management system to make it easier for lay consumers to complain. While online complaints have been coming, Colaco says, there can still be more.
Why this emphasis on increasing the number of complaints can be gauged from a simple number, this time from the United Kingdom. In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority, which is an ASCI-like body there, gets an average of 12,000 complaints a year, which means almost 1,000 complaints a month. "This implies that consumers and other stakeholders are conscious of what's happening around them and are bringing it to the notice of the advertising body there. So violations are under check in that manner. At least advertisers are aware that they cannot get away by doing anything," says Bharat Kapadia, former ASCI chairman, who is now an independent media and marketing consultant.
While India has some miles to go before it can reach the level of the UK in terms of complaining against offensive and misleading ads, Colaco says that compliance rate against ads that violate the ASCI Code have gone up significantly in the last few years. "Earlier compliance would be to the extent of about 60-70 per cent, now we are seeing almost 95 per cent compliance," he says.
There are two reasons why the compliance rate has shot up dramatically in the last few years. One is the pace with which the body is now moving to redress complaints. Second is the manner in which the body is making it mandatory for television channels who broadcast ads that are misleading to comply with the ASCI Code. "We have a legal backstop in the case of television channels since the ASCI Code has been brought under purview of the Cable Television Networks Act (1995)," says Colaco. "In the case of print there is no such backstop. So yes, it is not mandatory for them to follow our directive if a complaint is upheld."
The Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) - which goes through complaints every month - has increased the frequency of its meetings to two from one earlier. This has been done to facilitate faster clearance of complaints received. "I understand the turnaround time is comparatively faster now than earlier," says Kapadia, who was chairman of the body over ten years ago. "Earlier it would take two to three months from the time the complaint was received till the solution was finally found. Now, complaints are upheld quickly and the body too acts fast writing to the advertiser, pushing him to respond and taking up the matter in the CCC when a complaint is received. All of this happens in the span of a month," says Kapadia.
But can ASCI do more than this?
That is a question that many have been asking with no legal backstop available to enforce the ASCI Code in media such as print, outdoor or digital, the body, say advertising industry sources, still remains largely constrained depending on advertisers' whims, who chose to act or not act on the regulator's directives. In many cases, advertisers have been turning to the courts for remedies rather than approaching the ASCI for solutions.
Take for example the recent skirmish between Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and Reckitt Benckiser (RB). When the latter came out with a commercial for its Dettol Kitchen Cleaning Gel openly comparing the product with HUL's Vim, the Mumbai-based consumer goods giant opted to move the Kolkata High Court in its drive to compel the British consumer products company to modify the ad. ASCI was not approached at all, according to persons in the know.
HUL didn't stop there. It subsequently came out with a print ad comparing its Lifebuoy soap with Dettol disinfectant very openly. RB responded to that with a prominent ad last week saying that its product was as effective as ever and could be used for both personal and household hygiene.
