Different side of media and advertising

Out of blues I thought of reading news paper today and was bit surprised to see that an advertisement which used to come on television of Amul undergarments is being taken of the air by I&B (Information and Broadcasting) ministry. They have stated the advertisement to be vulgar and indecent. I obviously used to find it quite strange when ever I saw this advertisement on television, more over I was even more stunned when I saw posters of the same advertisements on Patel Nagar metro station and at few other as well. Delhi metro is Government governed it self and when they are banning this advertisement on television channels and giving them a piece of advise to be careful while choosing what to air, I really don’t understand what do they have to say about them self being promoting such a vulgar/indecent campaign. Though the posters at stations dint had much of so called vulgar element as found by I&B ministry but it definitely relates indirectly to the same campaign.

When I first saw the advertisement at the station I thought of taking a snap of it for my blog but I dint as I was in hurry, after reading the article in paper I decided to do it but then it was late the poster was being removed from Patel Nagar station and I could not find it at any other station as I kept looking from it while going back home. Anyways on searching the Internet I could find few other people also talking about the posters on metro stations of this campaign.

I find it really interesting that now ASCI (Advertising Standards Councils of India) has given this advertisement a clean chit as they dint found it to be obscene.

While reading review on mouthsut of this advertisement I came across a reader’s comment saying that I was clueless when my niece - 9 year old - asked me ’’what is she doing?’’. Similar would have been my situation if I would have been at his place. I personally find it a very cheap concept of promoting an undergarment and it is really not going to target educated audience just by adding a line in English at end of the advertisement saying ‘Crafted for Fantasies’.

May be issue is actually not with the advertisement but with the way campaign is being designed like it should have been designed in a way campaigns for condoms like Kamasutra etc is being designed. For example I usually don’t see advertisements of condoms coming up in day time at least on any of the family channels or news channels. But I really don’t think that the people manging this campaign would be interested in this idea as they are already planning to air this advertisement on Doordarshan and already working on a sequel as well.