Now, the government will look into misleading ads

“The government is setting up a National Consumer Protection Agency (NCPA) to monitor and penalise companies that make misleading claims in their advertisements. The NCPA, under the consumer affairs ministry, would be empowered to take severe action, including recall of the product and slapping cases against the firms. At present, the Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI), a self-regulatory voluntary organisation of the advertising industry, deals with such complaints,” Indian Express reports. This is a decision that will surprise few in the advertising and marketing industries – and a decision that advertisers and marketers have brought upon themselves. “The ASCI, despite all good and honest intentions, is unable to effectively curb misleading advertising. The process to complain is long and cumbersome, the lag between complaints and decisions are such that the offending ads have, in many cases, run the course and have done the damage before ASCI rules on them. [caption id=“attachment_239096” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Screengrab from youtube”]  [/caption] As the country gets more consumerist, the greater the need for protecting the consumer”, Firstpost had said in November 2011. Marketers and advertising agencies have, for too long, ‘gamed’ the ASCI rules, bearing in mind that the worst that ASCI could do was to rap them on the knuckles and ask them to withdraw offending communication. Agencies and marketers, in many instances, create communication that flout the self-regulation code – but the amount of time taken for ASCI to first receive a complaint and then act on it is time enough for the communication to achieve business objectives. There are no more details than the details in the Indian Express report, but what is noteworthy is that the NCPA will have the power to force recall of products and the power to impose cases on offending marketing firms. What is unclear in the report is the role and culpability of the communications companies who create the advertising. Are they to be put in the dock along with the marketers? The ASCI had a golden opportunity to truly regulate and keep the government out of the business. It’s the disdain that many marketers have viewed the body with, that has forced the government intervention. ASCI has been a puppy dog wagging its tail as the masters, the advertising agencies and the marketers, patted them. While being full of platitudes, there’s little that they have done to address the problem of misleading communication. Consider this. In late 2010, ASCI announced a code specifically designed for misleading ads in the education sector, an area which receives floods of complaints. “Under the proposed guidelines, educational institutions will not be able to promise jobs, admissions, job promotions, salary increase, etc. without substantiating such claims and also assuming full responsibility in the same advertisement.  The proposed guidelines discourage institutions from claiming success in placements, student compensations, admission to renowned institutes, marks and rankings, and topper student testimonials unless every such claim is substantiated with evidence,” ASCI had said. There’s no action from then – that’s 18 months of inactivity. And a quick glance at the ads in a single page in this morning’s Mumbai Mirror shows Speakwell English Academy saying ‘100% Job Guarantee’, The Personality School saying the same, Beacon Ship Mgmt. Pvt. Ltd promising ‘100% Job Assistance’. Marketers and communications companies, you asked for it.