Huggies Gets A (Negative) Hug from ASCI
Positive vs. Negative
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Can a Police Commissioner say that basis a survey of his 100 policemen, he finds that he is the best Commissioner in the country?
Can a social worker claim, on the basis of a survey of all the people who have benefited from his/ her services, that he/ she deserves to be in PM's Committee on Social Reforms?
If not, how can Huggies claim something similar?
ASCI - Adverising Standards Council of India - did the right things by instructing Kimberly Clark Level to discontinue a misleading print advertisement
The print ad claimed that 885 of parents chose Huggies Dry Comfort as the best diaper for their baby....
With an * and small related text at the bottom of the ad, it said that Huggies rated as the best diaper by the paretns, basis our survey of 135 individuals 2009
This claim was based on an internal survey, not covering a substantial sample size...The Consumer Compliants Committee of ASCI decided and opined that the same needs to be discontinued as "Claims made by brands can not be based on independent and self generated data"
But the larger question is, this is more of a postmortem, without any penalty/ negative publicity/ damage to the brand for such distrustful marketing gimmicks
By the time ASCI opined this, the common men - who doesn't understand the finer details, nor reads the fine prints, and cares about the safety of his child - takes the ad on its face value and starts buying the diaper
So Huggies has already benefited and the competitor have already suffered the damage...Closing the gates of the stable after horses have run away, is no good to the industry!!!
So what should be a better, futuristic course of action?
1) Publicise such wrong practices in leading newspapers
2) Force the brand owner to run a campaing taking its false claims ack and apologising to the consumers
3) Penalise the company and its Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), and put such penal money in a central fund to promote the cases of ASCI
What do you feel, dear reader?
