Surrogate Advertising: Government’s Latest Guidelines Similar to ASCI’s but Legally Binding Now

Debangana Ray

Published on June 13, 2022 at 18:20 IST

The latest government guidelines for consumer protection has a lot of goals such as prohibiting surrogate advertising, regulating celebrity endorsements and advertisements concerning children.

The guidelines are very much similar to ones by the Advertising Standards Council in India. The only difference is now the guidelines are legally binding and violating them will attract penalties.

These guidelines increase the onus of celebrity brands and prevent them from making misleading claims. It also puts a check on what brands celebrities endorse.

Ban on surrogate advertising may impact liquor players who resort to such advertising. Also, it might help the existing companies by preventing the entry of new companies who resort to such advertising.

However, the main issue is implementation. Proper implementation of such guidelines is a great task.

According to Sarwate,“Advertising is a highly subjective area. It is difficult to craft a set of tight regulations,”.

“In any regulation, ‘definitions’ are always a subject matter of interpretation and lawyers may have a field day,” he said.

National Award winning consumer activist, Jehangir Gai opined that “Detecting a violation is not going to be an easy task,”

He said that “The machinery itself is weak. And the way our courts and their appellate mechanism function, it can take a long time to seek redressal. Which consumer will really go through the process and follow up on the complaint? Besides, sometimes the advertisement loses its significance by the time it is legally stopped.”

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