The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) is a self-regulatory voluntary organization of the advertising industry that was established in 1985. It is a non-government organization that is committed to the cause of self-regulation in the field of advertising that aims to protect the interests of customers. The objective of the firm is to make sure that advertisements are according to its code for self-regulation i.e. to make sure that the advertisements that are released are legal, decent, truthful, and not harmful or offensive. The organization also looks into complaints that are received against all the media where the advertisements are released.
The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) is known for its commitment to the betterment of society and its initiatives. The organization, to bring awareness among the customers is launching a call-to-action digital campaign called ‘#ChupNaBaitho’. This digital campaign is one of the many initiatives that the organization has planned for the current year to create awareness about the offensive advertisements and to encourage customers to raise their voice against such harmful advertisements. The prime focuses of the organizations in terms of geographical locations are Mumbai and New Delhi. One of the eye-catching facts from ASCI’s Trust in Advertising Report – 2020 was that only a small percentage of people tend to report against misleading advertisements. Approximately 20% of the people talk about the advertisements on social media platforms and 65-70% of the customers discuss such illegal advertisements among themselves and tend to stay silent.
It is evident from the reports that a large portion of customers do not react to illegal advertisements and keeping these facts in mind, the organization aims to get more complaints from the customers and in turn reduce the harmful advertisements in the market. ASCI received 9283 complaints against 1906 advertisements during the year 2018-2019 and this has reduced to 4683 complaints against 662 advertisements in the year 2020. So, the organization is releasing this digital campaign which would have social media posts about relevant topics and a call-to-action that would help customers in knowing about the misleading advertisements. The digital campaign is expected to go live on all the social media platforms on 30th January 2021.
