ASCI Board appoints Arvind Sharma as Chairman

The Advertising Standards of Council of India (ASCI), at a board meeting held recently, announced the appointment of Arvind Sharma, chairman of India sub-continent, Leo Burnett, as the chairman of its board. Sharma has served as a member of the board for seven years.

Partha Rakshit, proprietor, Partha Rakshit Associates will serve as vice-chairman; while Vikram Sakhuja, CEO-South Asia - Group M India, has been re-appointed as honorary treasurer.

Other members of the new board of governors include: Narendra Ambwani of Agro Tech Foods; Hemant Bakshi of Hindustan Unilever; Rajiv Dube of Aditya Birla Management Corporation; Shantanu Khosla of Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care; Rajan Anandan of Google India; Sunil Lulla of Times Global Broadcasting Co; Benoy Roychowdhury of HT Media; I Venkat of Eenadu; Subhash Kamath of BBH Communications India; Srinivasan Swamy of RK Swamy BBDO; Dilip Cherian of Perfect Relations; Dhananjay Keskar of IBS; and Pranesh Misra of Brandscapes Consultancy.

During the year 2011-12, the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) met 16 times and considered 2,986 complaints against 176 advertisements. Of these, complaints against 103 ads were upheld, while 69 were not upheld and 4 were considered non-issues. In 89 cases, upheld ads have been voluntarily withdrawn or modified as per the CCC’s decisions resulting in over 86 per cent compliance rate.

I Venkat, director - Eenadu and the outgoing chairman of ASCI, said, “Last year has seen ASCI take various initiatives to strengthen the self regulatory system. These included increasing the frequency of Consumer Complaints Council to twice a month, introduction of the Fastrack Service, having a national conference on ‘Strengthening Self-Regulation of Advertising Content’, engaging with young creatives through a mobile film contest at the Goafest, interacting with the Department of Consumer Affairs and participating in their conferences on ‘Misleading Advertisements’. ASCI has taken a giant leap forward in introducing the National Advertising Monitoring Service (NAMS) which monitors
1,500 TV and 45,000 newspaper ads per month. All in all, a very satisfying year for ASCI. ASCI is the first self regulatory body in the world to initiate monitoring of almost all newly released ads in print and TV nationally with NAMS.”

The incoming chairman, Arvind Sharma, said, “It is indeed an honour to be elected as chairman of ASCI which has progressively contributed to effective self-regulation in advertising content. We are confident that the ad sector, industry bodies, regulators, consumer activists and the general public will actively seek ASCI’s services and take self regulation forward.”