Surrogate Advertising, Comparative Advertising
Surrogate Advertising
When the brand image of one product is used to promote another product of the same brand, this is called “surrogate advertising.” Products that look like liquor and tobacco brands, like playing cards, soda water bottles, apple juices, and so on, are often used to promote those brands. However, these products don’t really exist, or if they do, they are made in very small numbers, or “limited edition.”
People think that the idea of “surrogate advertising” came from the UK, where housewives protested “Siql” ads because they thought they were weaning their husbands off of them. To get around this, liquor companies started advertising safe drinks like fruit juices and sodas under the same brand name as popular liquors.
Ads for tobacco and alcohol are not allowed on Indian TV and radio right now. Ads for tobacco products can only appear in print media if they include the legal warning “cigarette smoking is bad for your health.” The Indian government changed the Cable TV Act to stop ads that directly or indirectly encouraged the sale or use of cigarettes, other tobacco products like gutkha and pan masala, liquors like wine and alcohol, and other drugs that make you sleepy, as well as breast milk substitutes like feeding bottles and infant food.
This caused more fake ads for alcohol and different products related to tobacco to appear. Surrogate ads mostly help people remember big brands like tobacco and alcohol, rather than getting them to buy them.
Sand Piper Malt Drink:
ASCI also upheld a complaint made against United Breweries on its own for an ad for Sand Piper Malt Beverage made by Triton Communications. It was clear that this was fake advertising for a brand of liquor.
Goods for smoking:
Consumer activists were worried about what would happen when the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) took down its code to regulate tobacco products.
An interesting new turn has been added to the storey: the Central Government has decided that tobacco companies can no longer sponsor sports and cultural events. Advertising of liquor products has been limited in the same way. If the bill is passed, it will not only be illegal to smoke in public places, but it will also be illegal to sell tobacco products to minors.
But experts think the ban won’t work for two main reasons: first, it’s not clear how surrogate advertising will be monitored; and second, the groups that can enforce the rules, such as NGOs, don’t have enough power.
The ASCI agrees that the issue is sensitive, but they think the government has gone too far. A few years ago, when the strong tobacco lobby fought against the Council guidelines, they were quickly taken back, which made activists angry. They thought that the ASCI gave in to the whims of the industry by stepping away from its duties and letting companies use unfair advertising methods without any checks. In line with guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO), they say India has not started a comprehensive tobacco control strategy.
The Tobacco Institute of India (TII), which is made up of tobacco farmers, exporters, cigarette makers, and other related businesses, said it would follow its own rules. A group of experts from all fields was to keep an eye on how well it was being followed. The code looked a lot like the ASCI code, which was strange. It wasn’t respected much by the industry, and it was broken a lot, says an ASCI member. In violation of the rules, a cigarette company used a famous movie star in a campaign with the slogan “Red and White smokers are one of a kind.”
N G Wagle, a consumer activist, says, “The ASCI works with the media to put pressure on advertisers to do the right thing.” If the tobacco industry really cared about following the rules, they would have kept the old code in place. He asks, “Why did we need a new code when ASCI already had one?”
Different people have different thoughts on the government’s latest ban. For some, the Rs.100 fine is not enough. On the other hand, advertising agencies say it’s unfair to ban ads when the products themselves are not banned. Most of the time, they say, “If the product will still be made and sold, there is no reason to limit its advertising.”
Also, as was already said, there is no way to check surrogate advertising. ITC, a big tobacco company, has made Gold Flake “expression greeting cards.” Wills has registered its sportswear as a new type of business.
TII says that since tobacco is a legal product, commercial speech should be free, and adults should only be able to choose to use tobacco products after doing their research.
In India, a “Tobacco Product” is any leaf tobacco or product with tobacco that is sold there. This includes cigars, cheroots, chutta, gutka, khaini, snuff, pan-masala with tobacco, zarda, kiwam, gadaku, hand-rolled tobacco, hookah tobacco, and many more.
The public is becoming more worried about the rising use of tobacco, its effects on health, and the need to keep minors and people who don’t use tobacco from getting it.
A few quick facts:
- There are about 6.35 lakh deaths in India every year because of cigarettes.
- A little over 33% of cancer cases can be traced back to smoking.
- But cigarettes alone make up about 10% of all excise taxes collected.
- The tobacco industry brings in a lot of money for the government.
- So it’s clear that the country’s health interests and its economic interests are at odds with each other.
Before there were laws against smoking in public places and ads? Several different types of legislation, as well as voluntary codes and self-regulation, have been tried to address these issues, but they have rarely been successful. Activists say that the new panel that was set up to watch ads and make sure that tobacco ads couldn’t be shown on TV channels, even private ones, didn’t do a good job of its job.
As was already said, TII wants to follow its own self-voluntary code. If they do, it will be hard to keep an eye on tobacco ads.
Similar and Different Ads
Comparative advertising, also called “advertising war,” is when a product or service advertises itself next to a competitor product or service in order to show that the competitor is not as good as the product or service being advertised. It’s advertising where “the advertised brand is explicitly compared with one or more competing brands and the comparison is obvious to the audience.” It’s also called “knocking copy.”
This is not the same as parody ads, which use a made-up product to make fun of the real ad. It’s also not the same as using a made-up brand name to compare two products without actually naming a competitor. (“The Wikipedia is less filling and tastes better than the Encyclopedia Galactica.”)
What does comparative advertising mean in the United States? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it is “advertising that compares alternative brands on objectively measurable attributes or price and identifies the alternative brand by name, illustration, or other distinctive information.” In the case of Gillette Australia Pty Ltd v Energizer Australia Pty Ltd, this language was used. More recently, the Law Council of Australia said that comparative advertising is “advertising that includes reference to a competitor’s trademark in a way that does not impute ownership of the mark to the advertiser.”
Comparative ads can compare two brands directly or indirectly, in a positive or negative way, and they try to “associate or differentiate the two competing brands.” When it comes to laws on comparative advertising, different countries have different ideas.
Comparative advertising has become more popular over the years. There are different types of comparative advertising, such as comparing a single attribute dimension, comparing an attribute that is unique to the target but not present in the referent, and comparing attributes that are unique to both brands. Some of the things that make comparative advertising work are believability (how much a consumer can trust the information in comparative advertisements), level of involvement, and ease of evaluation (by giving the consumer information all at once, without having to think about it too much).
Comparative advertising is usually linked to bad things, as early industry criticism shows. Giving reasons like taking part in comparative advertising hurt the advertising industry’s reputation and credibility. Studies have shown that negative information can be stored more effectively, which is what ads are supposed to do: make an impact, and more importantly, make people remember it strongly. Instead, this kind of negativity can be transferred directly to the brand and how the consumer feels about the brand. Over the years, many studies have shown that people don’t like comparative advertising.