Earlier this year when Hindustan Unilever took potshots at Procter & Gamble through the Rin versus Tide television commercial, the later preferred to drag the former to the courts, instead of complaining to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), the self-regulatory body that takes up complaints against any advertisement. Marketers say that one of the reasons behind this was P&G wanted a faster decision and ASCI’s decision making process is slow.

?The mechanism adopted by the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) of ASCI, which independently examines complaints of violation of the advertising code prescribed under the Cable Act, has worked with a reasonable degree of success. Perhaps there is a need to speed up the process a little,? said Raghu Menon, secretary, ministry of information and broadcasting (I&B ministry) at the silver jubilee seminar of ASCI recently.

Most industry stalwarts are of the opinion that while ASCI has been around for 25 years and marketers and ad agencies do seem to respect its decision, it has failed to become a powerful entity. And big companies do not always knock ASCI’s door when they need instant results.

ASCI is now looking to change the way it is perceived. And as part of the silver jubilee celebrations, there is a fresh impetus on becoming more relevant for the industry and respond faster to new challenges.

Professor Dhananjay Keskar, chairman, ASCI, says the ASCI board has made some key changes that is expected to strengthen the organisation. ?Earlier the CCC used to meet once in a month but now the CCC can meet twice a month. It’s just that we do not get enough number of complaints for the CCC to meet two times in a month.?

?ASCI worked for 20 years without any legal backing. And it is because of the Cable Act the industry takes it more seriously,? said Bharat Kapadia, director, Lokmat Group, and ex-chairman of ASCI. ?But the procedure through which the CCC takes the decision should be faster. Otherwise by the time ASCI comes up with its decision the damage is already done.?

?There are two broad themes. One is the response time and two is,?increasing the width and the depth of the complaints. We do not get enough number of complaints. The ASCI has tried but it’s clear that it’s not enough,? said Paritosh Joshi, chief executive officer of Star CJ, who is on the ASCI CCC panel. ?I have been with ASCI for nearly three and a half years now and I feel the main challenge as a non profit body is that the scope for evangelising is limited. Our ability on large scale evangelising is limited.?

This leads to the second biggest change that ASCI is trying to bring in. ?We are trying to increase awareness which is lacking amongst consumers about ASCI,? says Keskar. It was in 2007 that ASCI had first launched an advertising campaign to increase awareness about its services and it rolled out its second advertising campaign in December 2009. ?Before we came out with the ad, we used to receive 20 complaints in a month. But the campaign has been a huge success and now we receive at least 200-350 complaints in a month.? Earlier ASCI?used to update the CCC decisions on its website once in three months. However, it has now increased the frequency to once a month. It has also set up a helpline number through which complaints can be placed and it also accepts complaints sent by email.

ASCI has also rolled out a new process called ‘copy advice’ which reviews ad scripts and storyboards, thus reducing the chances of an ad getting axed after it is made. However, the idea has not caught the fancy of both advertising agencies and marketers. ?The copy advice does not guarantee that CCC cannot axe the ad later. The CCC will take its decisions independently. However the copy advice can provide valuable input,? said Rajiv Dube, former president of Tata Motors passenger car business unit, and vice-chairman of ASCI.

Keskar said ASCI has now started promoting the idea of copy advice which is free for members and chargeable for non-members. ?Because of this the copy advice has not grown to a great volume,? he said. And while Keskar supports Dube’s views on copy advice, he feels that ?it gives some sort of an assurance and eliminates chances of a flop on a major scale?.

Vindi Banga, former president? foods, home and personal care, Hindustan Unilever, talked about three challenges?the empowerment of digital technology, increasing litigation which is very common in the US and the regulatory aspect. He said that following the Cable Act, the broadcast sector including TV and radio consider the ASCI code of conduct as law and this should now also include print, out of home and other mediums. ?The principal of mandating self regulation should be spread to other mediums. Digitisation is moving very fast and it is only going to mushroom. Once you put out a message you lose control over it. People morph it, change it,?but they also reward heavily if it’s done responsibly,? he said.

Therefore dealing with the digital medium will be a challenge for ASCI. ?It should work closely with similar organisations in the US and UK and even innovate. We need to find ways to regulate the privacy of individuals. Business needs to rebalance its offers and we will need to increase shareholders? value,? added Banga.

Keskar said that one of the important agenda of ASCI will be

to increase its membership base which currently stands at 330. ?We have made an appeal to the I&B

ministry regarding bringing the print, OOH and digital industry under the ASCI code of conduct and the ministry is examining the possibilities. Once the code is applicable we are confident that membership would go up.?