Today, well known personalities are devoid of moral or ethical standards and will endorse any product

The recent scandal about Home Trade has brought to the fore an important issue in advertising. But the issue, rather than being debated, seems to have been swept under the carpet. Not surprisingly, because product endorsements earn hundreds of crores of rupees for the personalities who endorse the products, for the ad agencies that design the campaigns and, of course, the media that carries the ads. Too many people have too much at stake to debate the moral and ethical issues connected with product endorsements.

Advertising for products and services has always featured people. That's fine as far as it goes. It is a well-accepted fact of marketing that manufacturers and service providers segment markets and need to imbue their products with a persona that appeals to the targeted segment. When an ad shows a professional model (unknown or well-known) the implication is not necessarily that the model uses that product or service, unless it says so specifically, like in the film star campaign of Lux toilet soap. Models are professionals whose job is to lend their voices, faces and bodies to ads and fashion shows that showcase products. Most of us cannot even name the models that have featured in ads.

Ethics is a personal issue. But when one person's (or organisation's) ethical stand impacts another entity, it becomes a social or public issue. When a well-known personality who is not an advertising model endorses a product or a service, the implication is that the endorser uses that product and, therefore, is endorsing its quality. Millions of people who, in the modern day world, are starved for any real role models or heroes (there are no more Shackletons, Stanleys, Gandhis or Hillarys any more!) believe that the product or service is indeed used by their hero and, therefore, must be good. Which is often not the truth.

Is advertising supposed to tell the truth? A truthful answer to that question would evade most of us. But if the answer is 'Yes, advertising is supposed to tell the truth', then we are justified in asking: when Sachin Tendulkar endorses the Fiat Palio, is the ad not purporting that he considers the car a good product? And can he say that if he is not a user? Nowhere in an ad does it say that he is posing next to the product and mouthing the words that have been provided to him in return for several lakhs or crores of rupees. Is he not, therefore, at a moral level, guilty of misleading people if he does not actually use the car on a regular basis?

Interestingly, potential dangers of product endorsements can go both ways. Just as a bad product can mire the reputation of the endorser, a subsequent expose on a personality can hit the product as well, or does it? Mohammed Azharuddin was used by Pepsi to endorse its product. The self same man was indicted for match fixing, i.e., dishonesty! A few more such incidents (and they are bound to happen) and soon we will have firms of lawyers who will do nothing but due diligence on behalf of product manufacturers and the personalities asked to endorse them.

Legally, it may be impossible to prove that vicarious responsibility devolves on personalities or their ad agencies. But the question is: do ad agencies and personalities have a moral responsibility to not endorse products and services whose quality or reliability they are uncertain about? Advertising is supposed to inform consumers and give them free choice from a host of competing products and brands. Free choice can only be based on reasonably complete factual information devoid of any false information, explicit or implicit. By getting Amitabh Bachchan or Tendulkar, who are mere performing monkeys in the ad and do not even pretend to be technically or professionally knowledgeable, is it not the richest companies that have the advantage, rather than the manufacturer of the best product? From that point of view, the latest ad for Sprite is refreshing; the pun on the word is intended. The flip side is that if the public is dumb enough to use a product just because it is endorsed by a non-informed, non-expert person, then they deserve to be taken for a ride!

Ad agencies can hardly be expected to be ethical. When an agency can handle a cigarette or a gutka account without any compunction, we cannot expect them to truthfully communicate the attributes of products. When there is no real difference in frivolous products like Coke and Pepsi, the only thing left to the firms is to compete to get a better-known personality to endorse their product. Well-known personalities, reflecting the age we live in, have become greedy for money and are fairly devoid of any moral or ethical standards. They are all available for a price. They will endorse anything from chewing tobacco to cars to soft drinks to under clothes, whether they use them or not. Maybe there should be a law that makes it obligatory for ads to feature a disclaimer: "Statutory Warning: Sachin Tendulkar/Amitabh Bachchan has been paid a fee to endorse this product and neither vouches for its quality nor is it implied that he uses it regularly." That would be the ethical thing to do.

Nripjit Singh (Noni) Chawla

This article originally appeared in Business World - 01 July 2002