ASCI wins Gold at Global EASA Best Practice Awards 2014

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) won a Gold Global Best Practice Award at The European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) Awards.

The award was won for 'significantly reducing’ average time taken to handle complaints.

A statement on the win said, "The ASCI put in place actions to substantially reduce the journey time of complaints – from their first point of contact with the Secretariat, through the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) and on to the transmission of the final decision to the advertiser and complainant."

ASCI is credited with reducing the lead time of complaints processing from on an average from 45 days in 2011 to 28 days in 2012 and 12 days in 2013.

Partha Rakshit, chairman, ASCI, said, "ASCI is thrilled to learn that it has won the prestigious Gold Award for 2013. Last year we won the EASA Silver Awards for the National Advertising Monitoring Service (NAMS) initiative which started tracking most of the print and TV ads in India. That award spurred us to focus on improving ASCI’s effectiveness and credibility as a SRO (self-regulatory organisation) delivering speedier redressal of complaints and higher compliance of its decisions, which has got the Gold this year. Various Government departments now recognise and support our self- regulation work by including ASCI's code and representation in the rules and committees established to regulate advertising content respectively."

He added, "We are very grateful to EASA for recognising our work and for advice and encouragement they, along with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), provide to ASCI. I thank my colleagues on the ASCI Board, its Consultative Committee, the CCC and the Secretariat who together have made this achievement possible."