From infuriating hyper-advertising to ‘Social Responsibility’

Excessive or hyper-advertising leads to irritation. It has been observed during festive seasons that some advertisers believe too much mass advertising is directly proportional to high turn over – even in 2010 when the world over and especially in developed world, Social Media Marketing has taken precedence over the traditional mass advertising. But in India, not only the local companies but also multi-nationals like SONY (Bravia) seem to have high reliance as well as dependence on outmoded mass advertising. 

As a TV-viewer, how do you feel whenever you observe that a TV commercial is ‘repeated’ more than once during every ‘break’? A regional jewellery company (PC Jeweller – operating only in some states) has really ‘bored’ the viewers with its hackneyed and dull TV ad which was bombarded thrice during each break before Diwali-2010 – so much so that it has actually started “irritating” the audience to the extent of ‘aversion’ caused by nuisance. I call this “Advertising Pollution” which also badly affects and cripples children’s minds. In India, for generations, jewellers have bad names for cheating their customers in various ways until the Bureau of Indian Standard introduced “Hallmark” for Gold jewelleries to safeguard customers. No jeweller runs any promotional scheme to charge 1 Carat less for the gold jewellery that you have purchased (for example 20 Carat rate for a jewellery of 21 Carat). Instead they are likely to charge you 1 or 2 Carats higher than the actual Carat of the purchased gold jewellery by befooling you. Moreover, they can literary waste huge money on mindless TV advertising to “irritate” the audience or prospective customers to a great degree. Isn’t there any law in India that safeguards the TV viewers from such onslaughts of TV ad bombardments by the advertisers on every channel? If the companies have excess money to waste like drain-water, why can’t they channelize the excessive funds for the welfare of society they make money from? Why can’t they show their Social Responsibilities or philanthropy? They are only concerned for their own profits and bottom-line by squeezing each and every customer.

~Gunjan Gupta, Esq.