Maggi and Madhuri: Celebrities cannot escape burden of products they endorse

Maggi controversy should bring guidelines on celebrity endorsement and ethics of advertisements

prahlad

Prahlad Rao | June 2, 2015


#magi   #brand   #celebrities   #advertisement   #madhuri dixit   #preity zinta  

Credibility comes with a burden, a burden of honesty and that of sincerity.  And whatever they are worth intrinsically, the celebrities acquire credibility, real or assumed.

They are expected to cash this credibility tag with caution as their utterances have tendency to generate mass hysteria. Being a brand ambassador for a product certainly calls for greater caution.

The government has announced that any brand ambassador or celebrity endorsing products or services is liable for action if an advertisement is found misleading. This was the most needed action, and finally the authorities have woken up.

The government has said celebrities like Madhuri Dixit and Preity Zinta are legally responsible, if the advertisements for the popular Maggi noodles were found to be misleading consumers.

Endorsing a brand is like investment as lending face or voice fetches celebrities millions. When people invest their money, they do go through lot of paper work and due diligence of account books. If they can be careful about where and how to invest, why they can’t they be careful about the products and brands that they endorse.

According to the Food Standards and Safety Authority of India (FSSAI) Act, anyone who is a party to a misleading advertisement or its publication can be fined up to Rs 10 lakh.

The celebrities endorse many products that are socially irrelevant and medically harmful. They operate with no clear guidelines and lot of grey areas. Like media the celebrities seem to extend boundaries of mass entrapment and a public announcement of their endorsement ethics is the least they can do under the circumstances.

Misleading communication should not go unpunished.

Comments

 

Other News

Boost to offshore wind energy projects

In a major decision, the Government has decided to grant waiver of ISTS charges to Off-Shore Wind Projects and extend the waiver to Green Hydrogen/Green Ammonia. This decision has been taken to facilitate wider execution of offshore wind energy initiatives, to promote the expansion of Green Hydrogen / Gree

Duty of stakeholders to provide cost effective, alternate energy fuels: Gadkari

Urging use of alternative and cost effective fuels to reduce pollution caused by vehicles, union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said finding cost-effective fuels is the need of the hour and underlined that use of fuels like bio-CNG and green hydrogen help in protecting the e

Record production of rice, wheat, and sugarcane estimated

The foodgrain production of 3305.34 lakh tonnes is estimated in the current agricultural year 2022-23 – higher by 149.18 LMT as compared to the previous year, according to the Third Advance Estimates of production of major crops released by the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare.

India`s ‘AIRAWAT’ ranks 75th in top 500 Supercomputing List

The AI Supercomputer ‘AIRAWAT’, installed at C-DAC, Pune, has been ranked 75th in the world. It was declared so in the 61st edition of Top 500 Global Supercomputing List on Tuesday at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) in Germany. It puts India on top of AI S

Ocean Dialogue a great opportunity for G20 members

The ongoing third Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group G20 meeting (May 21-23) has focused on three aspects: land degradation and reclamation of mining areas, Blue Economy and sustainable ocean management and resource sufficiency and circular economy. Leena Nandan, secretary,

Semi hi-speed trains, buses could be primary alternative to cars

We are not paying sufficient attention to the rapidly growing oil imports (from pre-Covid-19 to post-Covid, in 2022). They surged from 102 million tons (MT) in 2019-20 to 168 MT in 2022-23, an increase of 68%.   India is the largest importer of oil in the world, and, at current rate, we

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter