Amitabh Bachchan, Saurav Ganguly among non-compliant influencers: ASCI report

A slew of celebrities including Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Sunny Leone, Sonu Sood, Tiger Shroff, and Saurav Ganguly are among the influencers found non-compliant with Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) guidelines, the self-regulatory body said in its half-yearly complaints report.

The regulatory body found Bachchan’s tweets on Beyond Life NFT violated its guidelines. Similarly, Ganguly’s social media posts on Magik Lighting and Xiaomi were in violation. You can review the complete list here.

ASCI further reported that between April 2022 and September 2022 it processed 781 complaints against social media influencers. It’s worth noting that influencers accounted for 28% of ad complaints. 

Of the 781 complaints against influencers, personal care contributed the maximum at 34%. Food & beverages followed it at 17%. Other categories are crypto (10%), e-commerce (9%), fashion and lifestyle (7%), gaming (5%), services (3%), durables (2%), finance (2%), and education (2%). 

Sector-wise, education saw the highest number of violations. The education sector accounted for 27% of the total complaints with 22% belonging to the traditional education category whereas the remaining 5% were from the ed-tech sector. 

Personal care comes second with 14% of the total complaints, followed by food & beverages (13%), healthcare (13%), and gaming (4%). 

During the said period the regulatory body processed 3,340 complaints against 2764 advertisements. Compared to the 2020-21 period, the ASCI saw a 14% rise in the number of complaints.

The regulatory body found as many as 59 non-compliant advertisers. Some of the known names in the list are Motorola India, Amazon Seller Services, Binomo, Pureplay Skin Sciences (India) Private Limited (Plum Bodylovin), Bodycupid Healthcare Private Limited (Wow Skin Science), and Beejapuri Dairy Private Ltd (Country Delight). 

Regulating influencers in the ever-shifting sands of social media was always going to be tough, and it is safe to say that the complaints with ASCI are just the tip of the iceberg. This is an issue that will eventually need the full backing of the relevant social media platforms to be cleaned up, something that we are not even close to currently.