Advertising Advice

ASCI offers ‘ADVERTISING ADVICE’ (AA) service with its long established expertise in the area of advertising depictions, claims and representations, through its extensive panel of advertising and technical experts. ASCI’s AA panel comprises advertising experts, as well as technical experts who are well qualified and experienced specialists from several disciplines such as Ayurveda, Formulations, Microbiology, Electronics, Market Research, Nutrition, Financial services and so on.

Advertisers who can avail of ASCI’s AA service may include members or non-members of ASCI.

A separate and independent panel called the AA Panel of experienced persons has been formed within ASCI who collectively have:

1. Technical knowledge of claim support required for advertising claims across sectors.
2. Experience in working at the ASCI Board and/or its Consumer Complaints Council (CCC).
3. In-depth knowledge of the ASCI Code.

The AA service shall have the following essential characteristics:

1. The AA exercise shall be confidential in nature.
2. It will be issued in the name of the advertiser.
3. It is advisory in nature and non-binding on the advertiser, as well as on ASCI’s Consumer Complaints Council.

• A Requester whether a Member or Non-Member can register for the Advertising Advice Service through this link https://forms.gle/AJPKkrrhDREMJ2zF8. In case of any query you can write to [email protected]
• Advertisers may seek the AA service from ASCI either directly or through their agency. The Advertising Advice shall be issued in the name of the advertiser.
• The advertiser/ agency seeking AA shall send the proposed advertisement’s storyboard or a/v script for TV / radio and copy plus visual for print/ digital advertisement (“Advertising Material”) with specific, if any, concerns they want the ASCI AA panel to look into.
• The advertiser should mention if the advice sought is “technical” or ‘non-technical’ in nature. In case of technical advertising advice requirement, the advertising material shall be submitted along with the entire evidence and technical/ non-technical data available for substantiation of the claims forming part of the advertising material. Advice provided on deficient documents (such as only conclusions of test results, rather than full detailed reports and methodology) may result in a faulty/incomplete conclusion.
• In case the advertiser wants the AA Panel to evaluate an entire campaign across multiple mediums, the following will apply:
  • • Where there is a Master Creative and other creatives are derived from the Master Creative, then up to 5 creatives (Master Creative + up to 4 derived creatives) will be considered as one advice sought.
    • The derived creatives should contain the same elements and claims as per the Master Creative.
    • If there are more than 5 creatives, ASCI may consider these to be an additional advice request.

The above is case specific & based on the advertising material submitted, the advertiser may write to [email protected] for further details.

• The ASCI AA Panel will provide its feedback on the Advertising Material and the claim support within the stipulated period and seek clarification(s) required, if any.
• ASCI shall issue the AA service to the advertiser upon completion of the exercise and receipt of applicable fees, as per the prescribed timelines from having received a complete request.
• The advertiser or their agency may request a meeting with the technical expert if they wish to understand the technical expert’s opinion in greater detail. This will be scheduled subject to the expert’s availability and mutually agreed timing.
• Post receiving the feedback from the advisory panel, and meeting with the expert, if any, the advertiser may provide additional documents in substantiation of their claim, which will once again be perused by the expert. The panel’s revised feedback will be shared with the advertiser or agency concerned within a reasonable time depending on the nature and extent of fresh evidence submitted, no later than 5 working days.
• The advertiser, agency or media may submit a revised/modified advertisement based on the feedback from the panel to confirm if the revised advertisement addresses the concerns that may have been raised by the AA panel. This can be done only once.

* All days refer to business days (Monday through Friday).

For Non-Members a Vendor Creation Form will have to be submitted, which can be downloaded from here : https://bit.ly/ASCIVendor

On receipt of your request, an invoice will be generated by the Accounts Team. Clearance of the same is essential as the process to fulfil the other perquisites shall begin then.

The payment can be made by NEFT/Demand Draft and the details are as below:

In the case of NEFT / RTGS. The Demand Draft should be drawn in favor of ‘The Advertising Standards Council of India.’

“Advertising and media is an important industry where ASCI has been playing a crucial role of self regulation for the industry. When ASCI launched its new service of Advertising Advise and provided a quick, insightful and impartial review of ad claims, we became keen to utilise this service. The service ensured that our campaign’s claims could be structured such that they could comply with the ASCI code and guidelines right at the pre-production stage itself. The ASCI team efficiently turned around the service in less than 5 days with appropriate recommendations that ended up saving us expensive production time and resources. We are truly glad to have availed this service for our new campaigns. ” -Dream11