MAM
Celebrities must do due diligence before endorsing products: ASCI
MUMBAI: Celebrities have been deployed by marketers to add credibility to their brand offering. These celebrities however have a huge responsibility to ensure that the products they endorse or feature in, are true to the claims made in those advertising messages.
Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has developed a set of guidelines to protect consumers’ interest while encouraging celebrities and advertisers to refrain from endorsing misleading advertisements. At a time when the Consumer Affairs Ministry is intending to review the Consumer Protection Act and may have a provision to deal with misleading advertisements featuring celebrities, these guidelines by ASCI could serve as a good reference for advertisers.
The Advertising Standards Council of India is a self-regulatory organisation for the advertising industry to promote, maintain, monitor and uphold fair, sound, ethical and healthy principles and practices of advertising for the protection of interest of consumers and the public.
The following guidelines would help while creating advertisements featuring celebrities or involving celebrity endorsements:
* Celebrities, for the purpose of this guideline, are those people who are from the field of Entertainment and Sports and would also include other well-known personalities like Doctors, Authors, Activists, Educationists, etc. who get compensated for appearing in advertising.
* All advertisements featuring Celebrities should ensure that it does not violate any of the ASCI code in letter and spirit. Celebrities are expected to have adequate knowledge of these Codes and it is the duty of the Advertiser and the Agency to make sure that the Celebrity they wish to engage with is made aware of them.
* Testimonials, endorsements or representations of opinions or preference of Celebrities must reflect genuine, reasonably current opinion of the individual(s) making such representations, and must be based upon adequate information about or experience with the product or service being advertised.
* Celebrity should do due diligence to ensure that all description, claims and comparisons made in the advertisements they appear in or endorse are capable of being objectively ascertained and capable of substantiation and should not mislead or appear deceptive.
* Celebrities should not participate in any advertisement of a product or treatment or remedy that is prohibited for advertising under:
I. The Drugs & Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954 as updated from time to time ( Link for preliminary guidance http://lawmin.nic.in/ld/PACT/1954/A1954-21.pdf and http://drugs.kar.nic.in/node/136.html) or
II. The Drugs & Cosmetic Act 1940 and Rules 1945: (Schedule J) as updated from time to time (Link for preliminary guidance http://www.cdsco.nic.in/writereaddata/2016Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 & Rules
1945.pdf and http://www.indianhealthservices.in/schedules/Schedule_J.pdf ) or
III. A product which by law requires a health warning “…..is injurious to health” on its packaging or advertisement.
* If the Celebrity either directly or through the concerned Advertiser/Agency chooses to seek Advertising Advice from ASCI on whether the advertisement potentially violates any provisions of the ASCI code or not and if the Advertisement is developed fully following the Advertising Advice provided by the ASCI, then the Celebrity would be considered as having completed due diligence. However, ASCI’s Advertising Advice will not be construed as pre-clearance of the Advertisement.
Commenting on the new guidelines, ASCI chairman Srinivasan K. Swamy said, “Celebrities have a strong influence on consumers and are guided by the choices they make or endorse. It’s important that both celebrities and advertisers are cognizant of the impact and power of advertising and therefore make responsible claims to promote products or services. It is in the interest of advertisers / ad agencies as well as celebrities to be aware of these guidelines and be sensitized to this issue to avoid violations.”
The ASCI’s guidelines help in ensuring that claims made in advertising are not misleading, false or go unsubstantiated. Advertisers following these guidelines will protect the interests of the consumers, especially for products or services, which can cause serious financial loss or physical harm.
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
