Coaching ads: CCPA guidelines to bring transparency, share brand experts
While the guidelines will promote responsible brand building, it will benefit in the long run if enforced well, say industry observers
The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA)’s recently drafted guidelines concerning misleading advertisements in the coaching sector will promote transparency and help the sector in the long run, believe brand experts.
The guidelines will apply to all coaching institutes, both online and physical, and cover all forms of advertisement regardless of form, format or medium.
The body issued notices to 31 coaching institutes for misleading advertisements and imposed penalty on 9 of them.
Nisha Sampath, Founder of Bright Angles Consulting believes the guidelines favour responsible brand building, which in the long run will benefit the industry.
“Coaching institutes are a parallel economy within the education sector and wield immense power and influence. Increasingly this sector talks to parents and students down the pop strata who aspire to climb the ladder. They are also increasing their presence in smaller towns. Hence, it's important that these new consumers are not misled,” she added.
But how will these guidelines help the education industry as well as the consumers?
As for Amit Relan, Co-Founder and CEO, mFilterIt, “These guidelines will help reduce the miscommunication of schemes and false claims by defaulters. It will emphasise transparency and accuracy for advertisers to protect their brand integrity and prioritise authenticity, thereby fostering a fair educational landscape.”
He further opines advertisers need to be transparent with their motives when advertising their coaching institutes. With the stringent guidelines, the coaching institutes will be obligated to validate their claims, disclose student results and avoid deceptive tactics.
On the workability of these guidelines, Sandeep Goyal, Managing Director, Rediffusion said, “Guidelines are mainly to give guidance but have very little impact beyond that. They are made only to be enforced. But does the organisation making the guidelines have enough teeth to make sure the guidelines are followed?”
Another problem is that the entire onus of making a misleading advertisement is put on the owner of the brand. The platform that runs that advertisement and all other middle parties involved too shall be held responsible for advertising false claims, as per Goyal.
As a solution, Goyal thinks ad agencies should do a check on their part before they start working on a client as well since they are equally responsible. “When everything is business, then there is no space for guidelines to be ethically or morally correct.”
“The industry bodies name and shame the defaulters only on their website which is almost of negligible importance. They must print and announce about it in bold in the newspaper to scream that the advertisement was misleading,” he further said.
(With inputs from Tanzila Sheikh)
