Don't give up on creativity, just draw a line: DoCA to adland

On Monday, the Advertising Standards Council of India unveiled the ASCI Academy, a pioneering initiative poised to amplify the advertising industry's capacity to create more responsible and progressive advertising campaigns. This platform embeds self-regulation right at the point of the inception of advertisements. Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary Department of Consumer Affairs spoke about consumer protection with regard to advertising and the various initiatives being taken.

Introducing the role of DoCA, Singh said, “We do four things - first is inflation management, especially in terms of commodities; the second is protecting the interests of consumers. We assure quantity and quality, which is also our third aspect to look after.”

“When we talk of ease of doing business, especially what we are discussing today (advertising), there is always a potential of conflict between facilitating something and protecting the rights of consumers. We have to strike a balance”, he said. 

He continued, “We don’t want you to give up your creativity, we want you to draw a line. We love creativity but will keep annoying you if you cross the line.”

In continuation of telling us about what DoCA does to protect the consumers, Singh said, “The fourth we have is consumer protection, we have 800 at each district, state and one at the national level. We have a national helpline, you can dial 1915 and engage with us, in many other ways we respond now in 17 languages and that is why, the complaints have gone up because of the accessibility. We get about a lakh complaints every month.”

“The number of complaints with regards to e-commerce has increased 5-fold in the last 5 years. From 8% now it has grown to 40%. Everybody is always ready to take consumers for a ride, which is why it is more important to protect consumer rights. During COVID, India’s two largest companies said that by using our paint, there would be no COVID, Who were they fooling?”

He also gave an example of Uber, “I will give an example of Uber, our Australian counterpart called us up that we are investigating Uber because their algorithm is tweaked in favor or against the consumer who going from point A to point B daily.”, and they found the same in Indian scenario and asked the company to correct it. 

Singh spoke about Greenwashing, he said, “Just because a product is coming in a recycled bag doesn’t mean it gets recycled, just because there is the green logo, doesn’t mean it is organic.”

While concluding his speech, Singh said, “Let’s be sincere to the consumer. Because as Mahatma Gandhi said - The consumer is the king."

With inputs from Tanzila Shaikh