{"id":1516,"date":"2015-12-20T19:13:19","date_gmt":"2015-12-20T13:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2015-12-16T10:59:04","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T05:29:04","slug":"india-needs-a-john-oliver-to-on-take-those-false-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/india-needs-a-john-oliver-to-on-take-those-false-ads\/","title":{"rendered":"India needs a John Oliver to take on those false ads!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Oliver_%28comedian%29\" target=\"_blank\">John Oliver<\/a> has taken on a few brands, in his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC3XTzVzaHQEd30rQbuvCtTQ\" target=\"_blank\">Last Week Tonight<\/a> show on HBO. Especially those with stupid activation and advertising. Sample a few below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/videoseries?list=PLi9GkZhra4vWzL231WzAd2sYyCR3mb95d\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>India needs him or one such guy to showcase a few ridiculous ads being aired now. Yes, there is Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) which pursues self-regulation in advertising in India. But, ASCI takes ridiculously long to pass a judgement (if you don\u2019t pay) and is too weak to enforce its ruling. The result is that brands get away with murder. The only way is to \u201cshame\u201d some of these brands into not doing some such thing in future!<\/p>\n<p>Sample the following ads for Airtel 4G\u2026<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/videoseries?list=PLi9GkZhra4vWeYv-0vYnm0YI3Yn7JxWxQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The ads which claim \u2018Airtel 4G\u2019 is the \u2018fastest network ever\u2019, \u2018download a movie in 3 minutes\u2019, \u2018upload an album in 1 minute\u2019 and \u2018if your network is faster, we will pay your mobile bills for life\u2019\u2026 started appearing in print in August (7th to be precise). ASCI took more than 3 months (September 24th was the first ruling which was appealed and November 24th was the final ruling) to rule that these ads are \u2018misleading by omission\u2019.\u00a0 In the mean time, Airtel pumped in hundreds of crores into print, outdoor, digital and TV communicating these \u2018misleading\u2019 messages.<\/p>\n<p>Then variations of this message started appearing. During September, there was not one but five different complaints against Bharti Airtel, in which four were for promotions of its 4G services! Claims like, \u2018get the same data benefits as your 3G pack and enjoy superfast 4G speeds at no extra cost\u2019; \u2018free 4G Upgrade\u2019; \u2018unlimited calls, unlimited movies, unlimited music and loads of data, offered in Airtel 4G\u2019 and \u2018unlimited calling, only with Airtel 4G\u2019,\u00a0 were all found to be \u2018false and misleading\u2019 or \u2018misleading by omission\u2019. <a href=\"http:\/\/ascionline.org\/images\/pdf\/asci-ccc-decisions-press-release-september-2015.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Check a few complaints here<\/a>, I am sure there are more to follow next month!<\/p>\n<div>There is the next big viral idea waiting if someone were to start spoofing such ads!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Oliver has taken on a few brands, in his Last Week Tonight show on HBO. Especially those with stupid activation and advertising. Sample a few below. India needs him or one such guy to showcase a few ridiculous ads being aired now. Yes, there is Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) which pursues self-regulation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"book_review_cover_url":"","book_review_title":"","book_review_series":"","book_review_author":"","book_review_genre":"","book_review_isbn":"","book_review_publisher":"","book_review_release_date":"","book_review_format":"","book_review_pages":"","book_review_source":"","book_review_rating":"","book_review_summary":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-30-day-challenge","category-rambling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/photo-1547139559-c89c59d117611.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1525,"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions\/1525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}