by NR INDRAN / INT
MUMBAI : At the Board Meeting of The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) held today, I. Venkat, Director, Eenadu, was unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of ASCI. As a member of the Board of Governors for five years, he has provided active support to Self-Regulation in the Advertising movement.
Arvind Sharma, Chairman of India Sub-Continent, – Leo Burnett, was elected Vice-Chairman; and Vikram Sakhuja, CEO-South Asia – Group M Media India, was re-appointed the Honorary Treasurer.
The other members of the new Board of Governors are:
Advertisers: Narendra Ambwani (Agro Tech Foods), Rajiv Dube (Aditya Birla Management Corporation), Shantanu Khosla (Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care), Gopal Vittal (Hindustan Unilever)
Media: Rajan Anandan (Google India), Benoy Roychowdhury (HT Media)
Advtg. Agencies: Subhash Kamath (BBH Comms India), Srinivasan Swamy (R.K. Swamy BBDO).
Allied Professions: Dilip Cherian (Perfect Relations), Dhananjay Keskar (IBS), Pranesh Misra (Brandscapes Consultancy P. Ltd.), Partha Rakshit (Partha Rakshit Associates).
During the year 2010-11, the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) met 12 times and considered 777 complaints against 190 advertisements. Of these, complaints against 104 ads were upheld, while 80 were not upheld and 6 were considered non-issues. In 84 cases, the complaint upheld ads have been voluntarily withdrawn or modified as per the CCC’s decisions resulting in over 80% compliance rate.
Rajiv Dube, Director-Group Corporate Services ,Aditya Birla Management Corporation Pvt. Ltd., and the outgoing Chairman of ASCI said, “It has been a privilege for me to have served as the Chairman of ASCI and I step down from the position with the satisfaction of a progressive year on self regulation in advertising behind me, for which I would like to thank all who supported strengthening the movement further.”
The incoming Chairman, I. Venkat said, “It is my honour to be elected as the Chairman of a organization which has been providing remarkable service to the Indian masses and ad industry by effectively self regulating advertising content over past 26 years. With the support of the ASCI’s Board and the Consumer Complaint Council (CCC) I will endeavor to further improve the awareness and usage of ASCI. I urge the ad sector, the regulators, civil society activists and above all, the general public to actively seek ASCI’s services and also provide suggestions for its improvement.”
You can contact the Author at nr_indran@rediffmail.com
