The business of being offended

The latest instance involves the jewellery brand GIVA and the actor Kriti Sanon. Its Raksha Bandhan film showed Sanon in an Indo-Western outfit — a bralette-style blouse, cape, and draped skirt — and, in one scene, tying a rakhi to a dog. Critics objected to both the clothes and the extension of the ritual to a pet. Kangana Ranaut called the film “intentionally creepy”. GIVA withdrew it within days, explaining that it respected Indian traditions and had merely wanted to show pets as members of the family.

What stood out was that Sanon did not apologise. Her response on Instagram made the argument the brand might have been expected to make: that the substance of a festival lies in what it means to those celebrating it, not in what a woman wears; and that the scrutiny of women’s clothing has gone on long enough. It was left to the hired ambassador, in other words, to defend an idea the company had commissioned, approved, and paid for. That inversion — the endorser standing firm while the principal retreats — tells us something about where conviction actually resides in the advertising business.

There is no shortage of precedent. Tanishq withdrew its “Ekatvam” film in 2020, which showed a Hindu woman’s Muslim in-laws organising her baby shower, after threats to store employees; it later pulled an anti-firecracker Diwali film after another backlash. Manyavar was attacked over a campaign questioning kanyadaan, Dabur over a Karva Chauth film featuring a same-sex couple, FabIndia over an Urdu name for a Diwali collection, Sabyasachi over a mangalsutra campaign, Zomato over a reference to the Mahakal temple. In most cases the response was the same: withdraw, modify, regret.

The point is not that Indians are uniquely thin-skinned; every society has people ready to take offence at advertising. What is distinctive here is the predictability of the corporate response. Withdrawal, once an exceptional reaction to exceptional circumstances, now looks like standard operating procedure. And predictable capitulation has a way of guaranteeing repeat business: if a few thousand hashtags reliably bring a national brand to its knees within forty-eight hours, the incentive to manufacture the next round of outrage is obvious.

This should puzzle anyone who knows how advertising gets made. Campaigns of this kind pass through creative development, client approvals, legal vetting, consumer research, and expensive celebrity contracts. A jewellery brand that puts its ambassador in contemporary clothing for a festival film has not stumbled upon the styling by accident; presumably it believed the imagery would appeal to the customers it wanted to reach. Nor can it have been a surprise that someone, somewhere, would object. The puzzle is not that criticism arrived — that was entirely foreseeable. It is that the brand then behaved as though the possibility had never crossed its mind.

It is worth recalling a counter-example. Ahead of Holi in 2019, Hindustan Unilever released Surf Excel’s “Rang Laaye Sang”, created by Lowe Lintas: a girl uses up her friends’ supply of colour so that her Muslim friend can walk unstained to namaaz, promising to return and play Holi afterwards. It was a neat extension of the brand’s long-running “dirt is good” positioning. The backlash was immediate — #BoycottSurfExcel trended, critics argued the film subordinated Holi to namaaz, and some called it anti-Hindu. HUL did not withdraw it, did not alter it, did not apologise. It explained the idea — Holi as togetherness, seen through children innocent of adult prejudice — and let the controversy run its course. Seven years on, the boycott calls are forgotten; the film is still cited as an example of purpose-led advertising. The episode established something useful: withdrawal and apology are not inevitable consequences of online outrage. They are corporate choices.

This doesn’t mean courage always pays, or that every creative decision must be defended to the last hashtag. Advertisements can be insensitive, ill-judged, or simply bad, and companies should be capable of admitting mistakes. The trouble arises when a deliberate creative choice is disowned at the first sign of entirely foreseeable criticism. That, too, carries costs, even if they never show up in a quarterly report. It tells the consumers for whom the campaign was designed — in GIVA’s case, presumably women comfortable in contemporary clothes at traditional celebrations — that their identification with the brand matters less than a few days of hostile traffic. A brand that will not stand behind its own imagery is asking customers to invest in an identity it is unwilling to defend.

It also leaves celebrity endorsers exposed. They are hired not merely to appear in a film but to embody its proposition. When a brand abandons that proposition while its ambassador continues to defend it, agents negotiating the next endorsement contract may reasonably ask who carries the reputational risk when controversy arrives — and price it accordingly.

The sensible course is also the simpler one. Before releasing a campaign that touches religion, tradition, gender, or social norms, a brand should ask the question it currently asks only afterwards: if the predictable objections come, are we prepared to defend this? If the answer is no, the advertisement probably should not run. If yes, a few angry hashtags should not change it.

Advertising has always been the business of attracting attention, and in the social-media age some of that attention will inevitably take the form of offence. Brands cannot control who gets offended. What they can control is whether they believe in their own advertising. Otherwise the same controversy, followed by the same apology, will arrive on schedule — at roughly the same time every year. The outrage is foreseeable. The capitulation is optional.