Understanding Advertising, Ethics & Regulation In Indian Advertising

Advertising is a form of mass communication that is paid by the sponsor and is intended to carry a promotional message to a large audience instantly. This promotional message is generally driven by an objective and is designed to bring about a change in the customers’ feelings, thoughts, and actions. Here are the five basic characteristics of advertising;

• Paid Communication
• Sponsor Is Identified
• Tries To Inform Or Persuade
• Reaches A Large Audience

Advertising message is largely conveyed through nonpersonal mass media such as print, electronic, outdoor displays, the internet and mobile devices.

1. Types of Advertising

Depending upon the objective, sponsor, and the audience, advertising can be classified as follows;

Institutional Advertising – Promotes a firm’s image, idea, culture with a goal of creating or maintaining an overall corporate image.

Product Advertising – As the name suggests, this type of advertising intends to promote the products of a company. There can be three variations of this type of advertising;

• Pioneer Advertising – Advertisements that educate and promote an entirely new product concept, such as electric vehicles.
• Competitive Advertising – These advertisements try to show the products of a company superior to that of the competitors’ products.
• Comparative Advertising – Advertisements that summarize the features of a product category from multiple competitors in a tabular fashion, thus comparing them one to one. Generally the advertiser will show only those features where his product is leading the pack.

Nonprofit Advertising – Advertisements that are placed by social welfare organizations to generate awareness about social concerns. Sometimes such advertisements are created for fund raising activities for philanthropic causes.

Public Interest Advertising – Advertisements placed by government organizations in order to create awareness, inform or alert citizens are called public interest advertisements. They pass on important information such as severe weather alerts, new laws, information about emergency situations or any other important announcement.

2. Components Of Advertising

Advertising process has five major components as described below;

• Objective – The motivation behind creating and placing advertisements. Objectives would generally be to enhance sales, boost profits or enhance brand image etc.
• Message – In order to achieve the desired objective, the advertiser creates a message to be conveyed. This message could be about discounts, conveying product superiority, contests or other reasons to buy their products.
• Creative – It is innovative way to sugarcoat the message in order to make it attractive. The creative design compels the audience to pay attention to the message. Various appeals such as humor, sex, fear, glamour, greed etc. are used to make the message more attractive.
• Media – Ultimately this message needs to be reached out to the targeted audience through the appropriate choice of media channels such as print, outdoor, television, the internet or direct sales.

3. Strengths & Weaknesses of Advertising

Strengths

1. Can reach a large audience instantly
2. Introduces products and brands
3. Creates brand awareness
4. Provides information
5. Reminds and reinforces
6. Persuasive nature

Weaknesses

1. High absolute cost which becomes a barrier
2. Difficult to receive instant feedback
3. Less trusted by audience due to perceived deceitful nature of advertising
4. Difficult to get attention due to marketing clutter
5. Highly impersonal and difficult to customize for specific audience

4. Participants in Advertising

• Sponsor – Sponsor is the person or the organization that needs to advertise to address their marketing objectives.
• Creative Agency – Creative agency helps the sponsor in designing the advertising message and offers creative appeals to make the message more attractive and visible.
• Media – Media channels offer to carry the message and the creative to the desired audience. Choice of media channel(s) depends upon the targeted audience. For e.g. in order to reach youngsters or teenagers, mobile devices or the internet an appropriate choice of channel. Choice of media channel also depends on the type of product being advertised.
• Suppliers – Various suppliers and contractors supply goods and services such as logistics, government approvals, promotional material, electronic devices, equipment etc. and contribute towards successful advertising.
• Audience – Finally the targeted audience for whom the advertisement was created. The target audience is exposed to the advertisement through the selected media channels and sometimes their attention is captured by offering something valuable. For example, for placing advertisements for spices and condiments, advertisers offer recipes and cooking techniques and place advertisements in between. The audience will visit the media channel for the value it provides and in turn gets exposed to the advertisements placed therein.

5. Effectiveness of Advertising

In the present marketing ecosystem, there are so many products and brands. Each of them is competing for attention in the cluttered marketplace. As a result, there is a lot of hum and noise in the market and the audience is overwhelmed with this noise. They generally avoid paying attention to advertisements placed before them. Hence advertisements have to be created keeping in mind the following pattern of exposure to be effective.

• Attention – The creative appeal of the advertisement should be such that it catches the attention of the audience over and above the marketing noise. There are many appeals currently being used by creative agencies as mentioned in the creative section above.
• Interest – The span of attention thus acquired can disappear very fast, usually within a few seconds or even less. So the advertisement should progress in such a way that it is able to keep the audience still hooked up by offering something that the audience finds useful.
• Desire – Having done the above, we have covered quite a distance and if the audience is still with us, we have done a commendable job. Now the advertiser must offer deals and enticements to cultivate the desire to purchase.
• Action – The desire so cultivated above can also be momentary, unless reinforced by very strong reasons to take a buying decision soon. So the advertisement should now progress to offering very compelling reasons to the audience to stretch out their hand (literally and figuratively) and buy the product. That successfully completes the cycle of advertisement and most likely would achieve the objective that the ad was created for.

Also Read – Creativity In Advertising – Rising Above The Din

6. Ethical Issues in Advertising

• Conflicting viewpoints – Many feel that advertising creates unnecessary desire and dissatisfaction in the society. This desire promotes insecurity, materialism and greed. Advertisement is also seen as a propaganda rather than truth. At the same time, another section of the society thinks that advertising creates opportunities, promotes higher standard of living and increase demand in the market. These factors, they feel, stimulate economic growth and creates employment in the society.
• Not all issues can be regulated – There are advertisements placed in the front of the audience that may be legal but in general are unethical according to the norms of the society where they are being placed. For example the law many not find anything wrong with surrogate advertising, pointed at tobacco and liquor. However, it still remains unethical. Similarly banking and investment products with fine print disclaimers and statutory warnings may pass the legality test but it is clear that they are trying to hide important information in fine print that could influence customers’ decision. That is unethical!!!
• Advertising as untruthful and deceptive – Most of the times, advertisements, especially advertisements about beauty and wellness products make tall claims. They play on the emotions of the young and vulnerable and create upheaval in the mind of their audience.
• Offensive or bad advertising – Abusive advertisements showing violence, sex, disaster or extremely shocking situations can impact the vulnerable sections of the society. Such advertisements are created to gain attention of the audience quickly.
• Advertising & children – Advertisements about products that enhance physical growth, intelligence, grades at school, competitiveness, and other capabilities create prejudices and complexes in juvenile minds. There may irreversible damage caused to young and innocent members of the audience by indiscriminate advertising.
• Sociocultural effects of advertising – Advertising can sometimes promote disharmony amongst different sections of the society. There have been advertisements that show communities in good or bad contexts, thus promoting or maligning them. This creates discord and unrest in the society.
• Advertising & stereotyping – Some advertisements show women as homemakers, poor as dishonest, minorities with suspicion, and the elderly as weak. Repeated exposure to such advertisements causes stereotyping, which is not good for the well-being of the society.
• Advertisers control media – It is often argued that large advertisers bring a lot of revenue to media channels through their advertisements and eventually start exerting their influence over these channels. Thus the channels’ integrity and neutrality and transparency is compromised. Their views and opinions, and consequently their content, becomes biased.

Relevant – Research & Planning In Advertising Campaigns

7. Regulation in Advertising

There are lot of acts and laws in force to regulate the advertising ecosystem. However, there is no dedicated regulatory body to monitor advertising in India. Realizing the need for accountability, uniformity, fairness and the ethical conduct in advertising, the stakeholders of advertising came together and created a non-statutory body to bring order to this area. This was done with an intention to redeem and maintain the trust of audiences in advertising and was achieved by creating a voluntary organization known as Advertisement Standards Council of India (ASCI). This organization did not intend to run parallel to judiciary or replace it, but instead, strives to create guidelines for advertising. These are created with consensus and are generally acceptable to all the stakeholders of the society, viz, the communities, law, governments, advertisers and the advertising intermediaries. To regulate and monitor adverting in India, ASCI has adopted Code for Self-Regulation in Advertising (“ASCI Code”), which applies to all involved in the commissioning, creation, placement, or publishing of advertisements. This ASCI Code applies to advertisements read, heard, or viewed in India even if they originate or are published abroad so long as they are directed to consumers in India or are exposed to a significant number of consumers in India. Though non-statutory, the ASCI Code is recognized under various Indian laws in addition to being adopted by advertising-industry bodies. Notably, the ASCI Code provides that it is not in competition with any law, its rules, or the machinery through which they are enforced, thus the ASCI Code is designed only to complement legal controls under such laws and not to usurp or replace them.

Suggested Reading – Advertising Law In India

“It must be said that without advertising we would have a far different nation, and one that would be much the poorer-not merely in material commodities, but in the life of the spirit” -Leo Burnett