ASCI launches campaign to raise awareness about objectionable ads
#ChupNaBaitho by ASCI is a call-to-action digital campaign
To raise consumer awareness about objectionable advertisements, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) is launching the #ChupNaBaitho, a call-to-action digital campaign. The campaign is one of several initiatives planned by ASCI, for this year, to create awareness about objectionable advertisements and encourage consumers to report such advertisements.
In the three-month pilot, ASCI will focus on Mumbai and New Delhi. 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. The aim of this campaign is to get more consumer complaints reported to ASCI, and thereby reduce the number of objectionable advertisements in the marketplace. Between 2018 and 2020, 9283 direct complaints were reported against 1906 advertisements.
Around 57% (of these were reported in 2018-2019 and 43% in 2019-2020 by end consumers. 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.
