To raise consumer awareness about objectionable advertisements, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) launched #ChupNaBaitho, a call-to-action digital campaign. It has been rolled out to create awareness about objectionable advertisements and encourage consumers to report such advertisements.
One of the key take-aways from ASCI’s Trust in Advertising Report – 2020, was that only 10% of consumers who come across misleading advertisements report them. Around 20% talk about the advertisements on social media and 65-70 % of people discuss it amongst themselves or take no action. So, by and large, even if consumers come across objectionable advertisements, they do not take any concrete steps to resolve the issue.
Between 2018 and 2020, 9283 direct complaints were reported against 1906 advertisements. In 2019-2020, ASCI received 4683 direct complaints against 662 advertisements – these included the ones received from consumers, 94 intra-industry, 12 fast-track, one via the government, and 28 via consumer organisations. These were in addition to the large number of suo-moto complaints registered by ASCI.
The campaign will have social media posts about relevant topics and a call to action, which will tell consumers when and how to report advertisements that are offensive, misleading, make fake promises, push harmful products, etc.
Manisha Kapoor, Secretary General, ASCI, said: “One of ASCI’s key objectives is to turn consumers into allies. We want them to be more aware of their rights and what constitutes objectionable advertising. We want them to report such claims to us and we promise to act quickly and decisively on such complaints. The overall goal is to drastically reduce the number of misleading and objectionable advertisements. #ChupNaBaitho is another step towards this goal. This campaign is just the start and will be followed by other such initiatives in the year.”
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