Advertising watchdog ASCI upholds complaints against 232 misleading advertisements

Advertising sector watchdog ASCI Friday said it investigated complaints against 389 advertisements in October and November 2018, of which 355 were regarding misleading claims including those of Hero MotoCorp, L'Oreal India, ITC, Pernod Ricard India, among others. It noted that out of the 389 advertisements, the advertisers promptly ensured corrective action in 112 of them as soon as the complaints were received.

The consumer complaints council (CCC) of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) upheld 232 advertisements from a total of 277 evaluated by them. Amongst the 232 advertisements, 53 belonged to the healthcare category, 95 to education, 36 to food and beverages, 23 to personal care and 20 were from other categories, it said in a statement.

It found Hero MotoCorp's Hero Xtreme 200r advertisement featuring Virat Kohli portraying violation of traffic rules, showing dangerous practices and manifesting disregard for safety. "The advertisement showed speed maneuverability in a manner which encourages unsafe or reckless driving which could harm the driver and general public," adding that the television commercial contravened a chapter of the ASCI Code and a few clauses of the ASCI guidelines for advertisements depicting automotive vehicles.

ASCI also pulled up L'Oreal for its L'Oreal Extraordinary Clay Shampoo and Garnier Micellar Cleansing Water advertisements and said the claims were inadequately substantiated and exaggerated, which is likely to lead to a grave or widespread disappointment in the minds of consumers. It also upheld ITC's Sunfeast Yippee Powerup Masala Noodles claim 'Atta Noodles' as misleading by omission and said it "exploits consumers' lack of knowledge as the product also contains 'refined wheat flour' (Maida) quantity of which has not been declared in the ingredient list on the product packaging." Pernod Ricard India's Blenders Pride Music CDs surrogate advertisement for promotion of a liquor product Seagram's Blenders Pride was found to be misleading by implication.

It pulled up P&G's Head & Shoulders Anti-Dandruff Shampoo and noted that in three advertisements - print, digital and point of sale to be misleading. It also found GlaxoSmithKline Asia' Sensodyne Toothpaste claim to mislead by implication as the findings of the dentist survey of 2015 showed that 80 percent of the dentists recommended Sensodyne toothpaste to their patients suffering from dentine hypersensitivity and the data is considered outdated since it did not correspond to the current or the previous calendar year.

It also considered Hindustan Unilever's Vim anti-smell bar advertisement to be misleading as the product with this formulation was launched in mid-2017 while the advertisement was published in August 2018. ASCI also found Godrej Consumer Products' GoodKnight Patches advertisement's claim, '100% natural', as misleading by implication and omission as it does not mention that the claim is limited to only the active ingredients.