ASCI to announce new chairman on Sept 4
Saugata Gupta, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Marico Limited, is the current Chairman
The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) will hold its Annual General Meeting on September 4, 2024. The meeting will be held to announce the new chairman for the term 2024-2025.
Last year, Saugata Gupta, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Marico Limited, was named the Chairman of the ASCI Board of Governors for the term 2023-24.
Partha Sinha, President, Response, Bennett Coleman & Company Limited, was appointed Vice Chairman, and Sudhanshu Vats, Deputy Managing Director, Pidilite Industries Ltd., was appointed Honorary Treasurer last year in September.
In the past one year, under the leadership of Gupta, ASCI has taken several suo moto actions as a commitment to both corrective and preventive measures to redefine the landscape of responsible advertising.
Recently, ASCI asked advertisers and broadcasters to release new ads only after June 18 with respect to self-declaration certificates. While various stakeholders approached MIB requesting more time before they got some clarity about the process, ASCI had already asked its members to halt airing or publishing new ads till July 9 when the matter comes up before the SC.
In March 2024, ASCI strengthened its gravitas by looping in CCPA. This meant the CCPA recognized that any violation of ASCI's code pertaining to misleading advertisements may potentially contravene the Consumer Protection Act of 2019 and its related guidelines. This collaboration encompassed guidelines concerning misleading advertisements, dark patterns, influencer guidelines, coaching institutes, greenwashing and more.
Effective February 15, 2024, ASCI’s greenwashing guidelines came into existence to ensure that environmental claims made by advertisers are reliable, verifiable, and transparent.
The first thing they did in October 2023, after Gupta took charge of the ASCI, was that they seemingly turned their attention towards the growing trend of influencers on the professional networking platform- LinkedIn. They launched a set of stern guidelines for content creators who don't adhere to the standard format for promotional write-ups.
In November 2023, they took a pivotal stride towards enhancing transparency and accountability in environmental advertising through the unveiling of comprehensive draft guidelines on "Environmental/Green Claims. Developed by a multi-stakeholder task force, including environmental experts, these guidelines aimed to ensure that advertisements are free from greenwashing practices.
They also released guidelines for ‘Qualification of Brand Extension-products and services’ under the restricted category prohibited from advertising by law in December 2023, which specifically targeted brand extensions associated with restricted categories such as liquor and tobacco.
