Have those of you who watch sports channels or casually observe hoardings noticed the top grossing advertisements? I was dazed to find the coverage and costs going into ads for elaichi (cardamom). Once, I counted how many times such ads were aired during a popular sport league match. I counted 23 slots of 10 seconds each per match. If we count for all 74 matches, it would total 1,702 slots of 10 seconds each, endorsing a simple commodity. And the absurdity doesn’t end there, as elaichi appears to be the only commodity which could hire most of India’s top celebrities.
A little befuddled by this, I did my research and looked into the cost of each ad slot and what these celebrities possibly charge. What I found bewildered me even more. Apparently, the spend on these elaichi ads runs into hundreds of crores of rupees. And don’t forget, I had only looked into these statistics for one sports league match. If we count hoardings, radio ads and ads on popular programmes on TV, a mammoth budget will be required to cover these costs. But can elaichi sales really bring in such revenue? Any rational person would say no. It so happens that their bigger revenue comes from other products sold under the same brand name which they can’t advertise because it is illegal to do so. These are nothing but restricted products such as tobacco, advertised behind the veil of mouth fresheners.
Let me break down the equation for you. Basically, these companies pass themselves for an elaichi manufacturer to advertise their brand name, while they major in selling tobacco and nicotine products such as paan masala. The packaging and appearance of their showcase product, elaichi, will be similar to that of the paan masala. Customers then see their favourite celebrities endorsing a packet of what looks like elaichi; that is if they actually take care to read the small print at the end of the ad stating the product contains silver-coated elaichi and not tobacco. At the store, they then see two different packets one with and one without tobacco. This brand loyalty and brand recall through the advertisement then pushes restricted products such as tobacco of the same brand. This is called surrogate advertising, which comes under the scrutiny of many laws and guidelines. However, companies who benefit from the ads find these loopholes to advertise their products. This is, however, difficult to stop given the current laws. You may ask, as did I, if this is all ethical? Because they are basically using the culture of celebrity worship in our country to indirectly promote cancer-causing products. The unavoidable truth is that there is huge revenue (thousands of crores of rupees) in these restricted products’ sale through surrogate advertising, and the morality of celebrities takes a back seat when such huge sums of money is involved.
So, what do we do to stop the increasing tobacco sales and thereby cancer incidence? At present we have no choice but to be a mute spectator and hope consumers get smart by denouncing buying and using of these harmful products, despite the temptations of celebrity endorsements. This is a huge ask, and apparently not working, given the increasing trends of revenue from these restricted products.
The most practical way to stop surrogate advertising is to impose laws to separate restricted products’ brand identity from non-restricted products. Hence, if they had to advertise elaichi, they will have to use another name for it and not the same one as the tobacco products. To save millions of people from using tobacco and becoming scape goats to cancer incidence, can’t we make one more justified amendment?
Anti-tobacco and cancer societies have been advocating against the use of tobacco and increasing the awareness of society in the popular media. Netizens should take up with political parties the need to curb surrogate advertising, specifically when the Lok Sabha election is round the corner.
rbasiboina@gmail.com
