The document discusses various examples of unethical advertising practices such as misleading claims, puffery, exaggeration, unhealthy brand comparisons, stereotyping of women, and use of children in advertising. Specific cases discussed include Nestle India Ltd's misleading advertisement for Maggie soup, Axe deodorant ads suggesting its products help men attract women, and New Balance shoes labeling some products made outside the US as "Made in USA". The role of Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) in regulating advertising content and complaints is also outlined.

1. Advertising Ethics

3. Ethics
• Moral principles that govern a person's or
group's behavior.
• The moral correctness of specified conduct.
• Ethics, most broadly, is the study of human
behavior and its consequences in the light of
what is ideally possible. For example, ethicists
might study a society's mores or morals to
determine what effect they would have on
humankind if they were used as universal
standards.

4. How Ethical issues arises in
Advertising
• An advertisement of Nestle India Ltd (Maggie
healthy soup) claimed that “Happy Heart” “Healthy
Soup”.
• The claim created an impression that consumption
of Maggie soup leads to better heart and health,
while on testing by independent agency, it has been
found that it contains high levels of salt which
releases sodium into body which in turn, causes
hypertension and high blood pressure instead of
good heart and health.
• Therefore, on complaint, ASCI declared the
advertisement as case of misleading by implication
and ambiguity. Therefore, Nestle India Ltd assured
ASCI to modify its advertisements.

5. AXE Advertisement
• Another Example of AXE a product of HUL, Vaibhav
Bedi had been using AXE Deodorant for the past seven
years, but didn’t able to grab the girls attention.
• Axe advertisements suggest that the products help men
in instantly attracting women.
• In what could prove to be a major marketing and legal
embarrassment for Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), a
26-year-old man has filed a case against the FMCG
company, which owns the Axe brand of men grooming
products, for ‘cheating’ and causing him ‘mental
suffering’.
• Vaibhav Bedi, the petitioner, also surrendered all his
used, unused and half-used deodorant sprays, perfume
sticks and roll-ons, anti-perspirants, aftershaves, body
washes, shampoos, and hair gels to the court, and
demanded a laboratory test of the products and
narcotics test of the brand managers of Axe

6. Role of ASCI (Advertisings
Standards Council Of India):
• Its primary purpose is to control the
content of advertisements. ASCI is not a
government body, it is a voluntary, self
regulation council, registered as a not for
profit company under section 25 of The
Indian Company Act, 1956.

7. The following are the basic
principles of ASCI:
1) To insure the truthfulness and honesty of representation &
claims made by advertisements and to safeguard against
misleading advertisements.
2) To insure that advertisers are not offensive to generally
accepted standards of public decency.
3) To safeguard against the indiscriminate use of advertising
for the promotion of products which are regarded as
hazardous to society or to individuals to a degree or of a
type which is unaccepted to society at large.
4) To ensure that advertisements observe fairness in completion
so that the consumers are informed on choices in the market-
place and the canons of generally accepted competitive
behavior in business are both served.

10. Reckitt Benckiser’s Dettol
Kitchen ad takes on HUL’s Vim

11. Reckitt Benckiser’s Dettol
Kitchen ad takes on HUL’s Vim
• Reckitt Benckiser, the launching commercial for
its Dettol Kitchen dishwashing and kitchen
cleaning gel shows rival Hindustan Unilever’s
Vim dishwash liquid clearly, in a move that may
trigger a new advertising war between the two
European multinationals. Skirmishes between
the two firms have been veiled in the past,
although both have repeatedly taken each other
to court and advertising watchdog Advertising
Standards Council of India (ASCI).

12. Reckitt Benckiser’s Dettol
Kitchen ad takes on HUL’s Vim
• “Such ads gives a very strong message
psychologically that it’s not just another product
and they can compete with the market leader.
While HUL almost has a monopoly in the
segment, there could be more action now in an
otherwise dull segment,” In general, the
consumer complaints council code allows ads to
show a rival brand as long as the claims made in
the ad are fact-based,”. Reckitt Benckiser has
positioned Dettol Kitchen as a ‘complete kitchen
cleaner’, for use as a dish-washing gel and
cleaning other kitchen surfaces like sinks and
slabs.

13. Horlicks Vs Complan
• The ad started with a scene inside the
classroom where the teacher is taking the
attendance.
• The teacher calls out " Calcium" then a group of
students raise their hands, then she calls out "
Iron " another group raises their hands.
• Then the voice over talks about the deficiency of
nutrients seen in kids.
• Then comes the critical part, a Doctor ( model)
comes to the picture and talks about 23 vital
nutrients that is necessary for the growth and
claims that these nutrients are present in
HORLICKS.

14. Horlicks Vs Complan
• Horlicks is trying to negate the core
differentiation of Complan .
• Complan since its inception has been
harping on the 23 vital nutrients. Now
Horlicks is trying to create parity by
claiming the same property.
• Complan has never been so aggressive
and blunt.

16. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=SJ5yU4_PQg4

18. Rin Vs Tide
• This is the first time that HUL has directly
compared Tide with Rin. The Ad even
have the tagline "Rin offers Better
whiteness than Tide". P&G has took HUL
to court over this ad. This ad was timed to
coincide with the long weekend so that
HUL could play the ad before the Court
hearing.

19. Unethical Advertising in Case of
RIN
• Now the outcome of the ad war will be that
HUL will be retrained by ASCII or the Court
from further playing the ad .
• It means that Rin had adapted an unethical
means against the competitor which will
cause an unwarranted blemish on the brand
reputation.
• Second outcome is that it will encourage Tide
to be more aggressive in the market. Tide
now has been officially and publically
acknowledged as the competitor for Rin.

21. New Balance Shoes “Made In
USA” Label
• The New Balance shoes that do say “Made In
USA” say so on stickers affixed to the tags
inside the shoes, but not on the shoes per se,
and not on the box the shoes come in.
• It is highly suspicious that their shoes labeled
“Made In USA” are being made “lock, stock and
barrel” in China, and that little manufacturing,
other than perhaps inspecting them and placing
a “Made in USA” sticker on them is actually
being done in an American factory, by American
workers.

22. Unethical: New Balance Shoes
• 75% of New Balance shoes are made in
China and Vietnam. Perhaps an even
more interesting aspect of the Fortune
article are the shoes that many of those
Asian factories produce on their “Third
Shift” or “Ghost Shift”. These shoes,
produced in New Balance’s foreign
factories, aren’t exactly counterfeits, but
they aren’t exactly genuine New Balance
shoes either.

23. Message inside Shoe Box
• These shoes have been produced by
the New Balance team in one of our five
U.S. factories.
• Unfortunately, we are not able to obtain
all materials and components for these
shoes in the U.S. either because they
are not available, or because economic
or quality considerations dictate
foreign sourcing.

24. Manufacturing “Made in USA”…
Really???
• The Federal Trade Commission has attempted to
determine what it means to say a product is
“made in” the U.S.
• We believe most consumers think “Made in
U.S.A.” means that real manufacturing jobs were
provided to U.S. workers in order to make the
product.
• These shoes were made by U.S. workers using
U.S. and imported materials.
• Where the domestic value is at least 70%, we
have labeled the shoes “Made in U.S.A.”.
• Where it falls below 70%, we have qualified the
label referencing domestic and imported

25. Conclusion
• The fact is that New Balance doesn’t
actually tell you how much of their product
is made in America. Their explanation of
the Federal Trade Commission’s
guidelines are very educational, but I think
that New Balance is trying to mince words.
• It has been advised to remove that
label of “Made In USA”, since parts of it
are manufactured from outside.

26. COKE VS PEPSI

28. Coke Vs Pepsi
• Both made fun of their respective
advertisements. (Eg: Main Youngistaan
se aaya hun)
• Pouching of Employees from both sides
• Making fun of celebrities used in
advertisement. (Eg: Official Drink & Not
an Official Drink)
• Mostly in advertisement of Sprite &
Mountain Dew.

29. • Surrogate advertisement
• Puffery
• Exaggeration
• Unverified claims
• Women stereotyping
• Women used as sex symbols for promoting
products
• Comparative advertisements
• Use of children in advertising
Ways of unethical advertisement

30. Surrogate advertising
Surrogate advertising is prominently seen in cases where
advertising a particular product is banned by law.
Advertisement for products like cigarettes or alcohol which are
injurious to heath are prohibited by law in several countries
and hence these companies have to come up with several other
products that might have the same brand name and indirectly
remind people of the cigarettes or beer bottles of the same
brand Common examples include:
Fosters and Kingfisher beer brands, which are often seen to
promote their brand with the help of surrogate advertising.

32. Puffery ADVERTISING
• Puffery as a legal term refers to
promotional statements and claims that
express subjective rather than objective
views, such that no reasonable person
would take literally.
• A two-year old might believe that polar
bears enjoy sipping Coca-Cola, but we know
better .

34. What do you think on this one? To me, there are two instances of
puffery here: "Serving the Best" and the actual brand of "Seattle's Best."
I'd say it is fairly obvious why these two phrases were chosen --
Starbucks is the coffee king of Seattle. So what better way to try and
compete than make your brand claim that there is nothing better out
there. Both of these claims are puffery, however, because -- based on
my simple working definition above -- neither claim can be positively
proved or disproved, or they are simply opinions.

36. EXAGGERATION
• Using false claims in the advertisements about the
product.
• For example:-Ghari detergent - “Pehle Istemaal kare
phir vishvaas kare.”, Tide detergent – “White ho to
Tide ho.”, Vodafone Essar – “Wherever you go our
network follows.”
White ho to
Tide ho.
One Drop Challenge Wherever you go our
network follows.

38. Unverified Claims
• It includes advertisements of “energy drinks” which
tells us about the number of vitamins and how they
help children to grow strong and tall.
• There is no way of verifying these false claims.
• For example:-Horlicks, Maltova, Tiger biscuits.

40. WOMEN IN
ADVERTISING

41. Women are generally associated with household works
and is not supposed to be a good decision maker which
contributes to women stereotyping.
Women stereotyping

42. Women shown as doing domestic work which
reflects stereotype image of women.

44. Unhealthy Brand comparisons
• Nowadays advertisers are engaged in unhealthy
brand comparison with the help of advertising.
• Such comparisons create problems and confusions
for the right choice of the product as far as
audience are concerned.
• Example can be cited of colgate and pepsodent
toothpaste.

45. Colgate Vs Pepsodent
Complan Vs Horlicks
Coca cola Vs Pepsi

48. Children in advertising
• Children are easily
persuaded and have a
large pull on today's
markets, as is known by
all advertisers, even ones
who do not intend for
their products to be
consumed by children.

49. • https://www.youtub
e.com/watch?
v=xA14pAGW4UA