Advertising Standards Council of India
Consumer Complaints Council
"The Advertising
Standards Council of India (ASCI)", established in 1985,
is a self-regulatory voluntary organization of the advertising industry in India.
It is a non-Government body. ASCI is committed to the cause of self- regulation
in advertising ensuring the protection of the interest of consumers. ASCI seek
to ensure that advertisements conform to its Code for Self-Regulation, which
requires advertisements to be legal, decent, honest and truthful and not
hazardous or harmful while observing fairness in competition. ASCI look into
complaints across ALL MEDIA such as Print, TV, Radio, hoardings, SMS, Emailers,
Internet / web-site, product packaging, brochures, promotional material and
point of sale material etc.
Objectives of ASCI:
The
main objects to be pursued by the Company on its incorporation are:
To monitor administer and promote standards of
advertising practices in India with a view to.
i. Ensuring the truthfulness and honesty of
representations and claims made through advertising and safeguarding against
misleading advertising.
ii. Ensuring that Advertising is not offensive to
generally accepted norms and standards of public decency.
iii. Safeguarding against the indiscriminate use of
advertising for the promotion of products or services, which are generally
regarded as hazardous to society or to individuals or which are unacceptable to
society as a whole.
iv. Ensuring that advertisements observe fairness
in competition and the canons of generally accepted competitive behaviour.
v. To codify adopt and from time to time modify the
code of advertising practices in India and implement, administer and promote
and publicize such a code.
vi. To provide facilities and machinery in the form
of one or more Consumer Complaints Councils having such composition and with
such powers as may be prescribed from time to time to examine complaints
against advertisements in terms of the Code of Advertising practices and report
thereon.
vii.
To give wide publicity to the Code and seek adherence to it of as many as
possible of those engaged in advertising.
viii.
To print and publish pamphlets, leaflets, circulars or other literature or
material that may be considered desirable for the promotion of or carrying out
of the objects of the Company and disseminate it through any medium of
communication.
Consumer Complaints Council:
The
Board of Governors shall appoint Consumer Complaints Council, the number of
members of which shall not be more than twenty-one. Out of these 21 members, 12
are from civil society and nine from advertising practitioners. The CCC decides
upon the complaints within a period of 4 to 6 weeks.
The
Consumer Complaints Council shall examine and investigate the complaints
received from the consumers and the general public, including the members of
the Company, regarding any breach of the Code of Conduct and/or advertising
ethics and recommend the action to be taken in that regards.
Power
of the Consumer Complaints Council:
i.
Each Council shall be entitled to receive complaints from the Board of Governors,
the Consumers, the general public and members of the Company.
ii.
Each Council shall enquire, investigate and decide upon the complaints received
by it within the framework of the Code of Conduct adopted by the Company.
iii.
All the decisions of each Council shall be by simple majority, in writing and
may specify the action to be taken in respect of the offending advertisement.
ASCI
encourage the public to COMPLAIN against advertisements with which they may be
unhappy for any reason and ensures that each complaint receives a prompt and
objective consideration by an impartial committee Consumer Complaints Council
(CCC) which takes into account the view point of the advertiser, and an
appropriate decision is communicated to all concerned. ASCI endeavors to
achieve compliance with its decisions through reasoned persuasion and the power
of public opinion.
The
Role and Functioning of the ASCI & its Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) in
dealing with complaints received from consumers and industry, against ads which
are considered as false, misleading, indecent, illegal, leading to unsafe
practices, or unfair to competition, and consequently in contravention of the
ASCI code for self-regulation in advertising.
No comments:
Post a Comment