Desipundit.com has been covering the IIPM imbroglio as it evolves and it is sickening to see the levels that IIPM and its supporters are stooping to. Both Rashmi Bansal and Gaurav Sabnis deserve all the support not just from bloggers but from everyone else too. This kind of attack could happen to anyone - indeed a company in South Africa began to publicly investigate a journalist who was investigating the company - and could turn nasty and personal.
The attack on individuals apart, IIPM has unwittingly precipitated a timely debate on deceptive advertising practices by educational institutions. This provides an opportunity to consider the possibilities of taking action against deceptive advertising under the current laws and discuss the steps required to avoid the recurrence of such instances in the future. Stepping back for a moment, let's take a look at what led to such a situation in the first place.
IIPM has been aggressively advertising in the print media across the country in most of the newspapers and magazines. IIPM reportedly spent 2.8 Crores in April and 5.1 Crores in May 2005 on advertising in the print media, at a time when students are likely to be making decisions on which institutions to join. Such marketing budgets would be the envy of FMCG/Durable giants, let alone other educational institutions.
The frequency, reach and size of IIPM's print advertising in the recent months have been such that it's unlikely that anyone looking to join an MBA course this year could have missed them. With little or no means for readers to gauge the claims made in IIPM's advertisments, the ads have taken on a Goebbelsian colour. In the absence of any questioning of the claims, the more the frequency of ads, the more people tend to believe the claims. Its no simple matter for any aspiring student to check the veracity of the claims in the ads - they can only hope that if the advertisements appear in leading newspapers, they ought to be true.
Srinivasan Swamy, CEO of advertising agency RK Swamy BBDO, in a recent article in The Financial Express (October 06, 2005) points to the fact that educational institutions are the number one category in print advertising today and looks at the opportunities this presents for the media and the advertising agencies.
According to the National Sample Survey for 2003, per capita expenditure on education rose from 1.2% in 1983 to 2.4% in 1993, 2.8% in 1999 and 4.4% in 2003.Predictably in the urban areas the growth was a strapping 200% from 2.1% in 1983 to 6.3% in 2003. The rural sector showed higher growth of 262% from a mere 0.8% in 1983 to 2.9% in 2003. No wonder there was a tremendous hunger in this crowd to know more on the best education opportunities, which many institutions rushed to feed.
Sensing a unique opportunity, the print media was fast with its response. Print media launched special vehicles to capture this ad spend and married this with relevant editorial inputs. Today most English language dailies have supplements and some language papers have also jumped on to the bandwagon. But why this sudden rush to advertise? Competition. Competition from the hundreds of private educational institutions that have come about in the last 10 years or so. This coupled with many options that have opened for students to study - course content, location and even costs.
The entry of foreign universities through education consultants and franchisees could be counted as a key signpost in this growth. Students can truly choose between India, England, Australia, US, China, Europe etc because of free availability of foreign exchange as well as loan availability on easy terms. The emergence of training institutes for entirely new career options like airlines, travel, clinical research, 3D animation, all needing to announce their arrival to the public, added to the advertising boom. However, most of these ads are ’notice’ type even today.
What we are about to witness in the next few years would be qualitatively different from what we see today. With increasing competition, educational institutions would apply all the marketing principles; the advertising we will see will be more focused on addressing the needs of the students. The shift is already evident. A few institutions like IIPM, ISB, Amity International, Rai University, Wellingkars, Wigan & Leigh etc are using image-building elements to differentiate themselves from the rest of the crowd. It seems this sector would present some interesting challenges for the ad industry in building brands that endure.
It is not just an opportunity for the media and ad industry - along with that also comes a responsibility to the public at large, which they have attempted to live up to through the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). The ASCI, set up in 1985, is a voluntary group of members and has adopted a self-regulatory code for advertising. The composition of the Board of ASCI is fairly representative of advertisers, ad agencies, the media and allied professions. According to a recent report in Indiantelevision.com (September 10, 2005),
The Tobacco Institute of India chairman Ram Poddar has been unanimously elected chairman of the Board of The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). Cadbury (India) Ltd. managing director Bharat Puri was elected vice chairman and Hindustan Lever Ltd. managing director Arun Adhikari has been appointed the treasurer. The other members of the new Board of Governors are:
Advertisers: Rajiv Dube (Tata Motors), Shantanu Khosla (P&G Hygiene and Health Care),
Media: Bhaskar Das (Bennett Coleman & Co), Vikram Kaushik (Space TV), G Krishnan (TV Today), N Murali (Kasturi & Sons),
Ad. Agencies: Sam Balsara (Madison Communications), Madhukar Kamath (Mudra), Pranesh Misra (Lintas), Arvind Sharma (Leo Burnett),
Allied Professions: Dilip Cherian (Perfect Relations), Dhananjay Keskar (ICFAI Business School) and Partha Rakshit (AC Nielsen Research Services).The Council made representations to the Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and to the Secretary and Additional Secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, at their meetings held in February and April 2005, to ensure stronger support for the Council and its self-regulation movement, so that the advertisements contravening the ASCI Code, are stopped. Both the Ministries appreciated the self-regulatory work being done by the Council and confirmed Government's support by mentioning that in future, complaints against any advertisements received by them will be directed to the Council.
The Council is represented on three Committees notified by three separate Ministries, through which it has been able to influence government's policy making on advertising content and to obtain support for the Self-Regulation movement. The I&B ministry committee has decided to recommend a change in the Cable TV Rules by which, contravention of the ASCI Code by any TV commercial, will be considered as a violation of the Cable TV Act.
Poddar stated that the focus of the year would be to get every advertising industry body such as the AAAI, IAA-India Chapter, INS, ISA and IBF, to become even more actively involved with the vital issue of self regulation of advertising, so that Indian advertising continues to set high standards to enhance the confidence of consumers, in advertised products and services particularly those directed at children and women.
Though its members have voluntarily submitted themselves to the code, unlike the Medical Council of India or the Bar Council of India which are stautory bodies set up by Acts of Parliament, the ASCI has no statutory or judicial powers - it operates purely on self-regulation. As a result, on occasion, even members themselves might choose not to accept the code or decisions of the council, let alone non-members who have no obligation of any sort to accept the code and abide by it. Maybe it is time for the government to work more closely with the ASCI, turn it into a regulatory body like the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and provide it with more powers to regulate advertising standards in the country.
Apart from ASCI's code, a recent initiative by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in the context of the Right to Information Act (2005) could help regulate advertising by educational institutions. Not only has the UGC come up with a set of detailed disclosure norms for all higher education institutions, the UGC is also proposing to make it mandatory for every higher education institution to
- necessarily disclose (in all its advertisements and promotional materials in print form or electronic form) the name, address, URL and type of body that runs the institution along with the contact details of the head of the institution and the Public Information Officer. The institution shall also explictly state the accreditation, recognition and approval status of the institution and/or courses advertised.
- ensure that it does not furnish information (in its advertisements, promotional / information materials either in print or electronic form), that may amount to a deceptive practice as specified in Schedule II of the Returns of Information Rules.
Every recognised and accredited higher education institution in India will come under the purview of the UGC's proposed Returns of Information Rules, when they come into effect (which will hopefully be soon), and could face penalties if they don't abide by the Rules. But institutions like IIPM which are not accredited or recognised by the UGC will be outside the ambit. Nevertheless, institutions like IIPM rely on the advertising agencies (to design their advertising communication and copy) and the print and electronic media (to reach out to their potential target audience). The ad agencies and the media could insist on all higher education institutions, irrespective of whether they fall within the purview of the UGC or not, conforming to the UGC's disclosure and deceptive advertising norms if they want to advertise in the media. It may sound far-fetched to expect the media and the ad agencies to dictate such terms to potential advertisers willing to spend large sums on advertising, but the media and the ad agencies could find themselves on a slipperly slope if more instances of deceptive advertising become known to the public at large.
