Looks like the Hindutva beholders and custodians have now found yet another easy prey! Going by the present trend, this Diwali is not going to be very colourful for the advertisement industry, especially the advertising agencies which are creatively trying to churn out ads that have different messages to sell their client’s products. After Tanishq, it was fab India and now it is Ceat tyres, all these brands’ advertisements have come to a “dangerous scrutiny of Hindutva brigade”!
Advertising industry in India is bigger than what we all assume to be. With crores of money being spent on this segment, it is easy target for miscreants to throw a stone and watch the fun. This is what seems to be happening in the country presently. If the advertisement is against the sentiment of a particular community, the simple way is directly contact the company and ask them to withdraw the advertisement from the market.
Unfortunately, this is not happening. The right wing activities are getting on to social media to destroy the company completely and even run campaigns to boycott the company completely. There are certain posts which called upon people to economically destroy the company! “This is not a way to help country progress. It is mere smear campaign by few miscreants. But unfortunately world in the phone and social media platforms, hence their call is very effective and damages the reputation of the company,” said senior executive from an ad agency in Hyderabad.
The recent example was the Diwali advertisement campaign that Fabindia had released. Fabindia is known for its traditional and desi varieties of fabric and dress supplier. Unfortunately, the company “thought innovatively and wanted to make it an inclusive campaign and names its latest collection of dresses as Jashn – e- Riwaaz.” This invited wrath from people in such a manner that boycott Fabindia became viral within no time and the company was forced to withdraw the ads as well clarify that the collection were not meant for Diwali. Even then the Hindutva brigade was unhappy!
Latest to catch the wrath of “right wing custodians of culture” is an advertisement of Ceat tyres featuring Aamir Khan. In the advertisement, Aamir is seen asking people not fire crackers on the roads. Karnataka Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader immediately in attack of the ad and has called for immediate ban of this advertisement.
Going by the happenings, it will be difficult for creative minds to come up with innovative campaigns, one might not be surprised if the government might consider to have committee that will look into cultural, religions and communal aspects of advertisements before they are released into public. Though times ahead for the advertisement and entertainment industry in days to come!