Ethical Issues in Advertising

Author : Rahul Singal & Geeta Kamra

Abstract

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Advertisement acts as a communicating bridge between producer and consumer. With industrialization and expansion of market access, importance of advertising is steadily on the increase in modern society. Advertising, using media as its vehicle, is a pervasive, powerful force shaping attitudes and behavior in today’s world. At times it goes beyond the traditional role of ‘fair and truthful’ information and portraits obscene, undesirable and unethical scenes giving a detrimental result especially on the young population of the society. The article have talked about various types of unethical advertisements like advertisements with obscenity and sexual overtone, endorsed by children, surrogate advertising, subliminal advertisements, false and misleading advertisements etc. The ethical aspect of Indian advertisement is extremely important for restoration of our Indian culture, norms, ethics and heritage. This article also talks about statutory prohibition and regulations of such unethical advertisements and establishment of self-regulatory body like ASCI to tackle the problem. But the most important problem lies in improper implementation of the laws.

Keywords: Advertisement, Ethics in Advertising, ASCI, regulatory laws, Advertising regulations