‘Pre-Workout Protein Power’, ‘Infused with Vitamin E’, ‘Enriched with Aloe Vera’. These are the kind of claims a consumer listens to almost every day when it comes to healthcare and skincare ads. These promises grab a consumer’s attention and may even impact their buying decision. But are they really true?
Recently ASCI released a report on the top ad violators and to not much of everyone’s surprise, healthcare emerged as the most violative sector, constituting 21 percent of all ads processed. The surge is attributed to a high volume of drug and medicine advertisements on digital platforms, said the body. ASCI referred 565 advertisements to the Ministry of AYUSH in just six months, compared to 464 ads referred in the last financial year.
But, if an established and well-trusted brand like Patanjali can receive a warning from the Supreme Court to pay a crore in fine for their misleading medicine advertisements, imagine the magnitude of brands making false claims and their impact on consumers’ health and well-being. Some other brands in the top violators' list were HK Vitals, MuscleBlaze, Ketto India, ProteinMix, Nirvasa Healthcare and more.
Nisha Sampath of Bright Angles Consulting believes the ad guidelines are very clear cut for hospital brands and pharma brands but when it comes to Ayurved or healthcare brands, the rules are a lot more loose. Having said that, brands increasingly feel that the online consumer is becoming more evaluative, more comparative and more aware.
Today, brands are supposed to notonly create a TVC and wait for the results to happen but also constantly communicatie with the consumer at every touchpoint of the funnel.
This puts them under the pressure to create conversations and ideate new ways to communicate effectively, said Sampath.
She further added, “Ideally, the product and R&D teams should be more directly connected with the ad agencies where they can fact-check all the scientific claims made by the creative teams. At the same time communication professionals can get more ideas from them. But, in a lot of cases that communication is layered and there is pressure to amplify things. That’s where the issue occurs.”
In an era where competition is tight and the consumer is well-aware, the ultimate goal of brands should not be to impress the consumer, but to build trust and equity is extremely important.
Influencers like Foodpharmer, TheLiverDoc, and Dr Cuterus have also contributed to spreading unknown myths and facts about human health and the products we use in our daily lives, which makes the consumer very well-aware of the ingredients in their daily-use products. Hence, it's nearly impossible to fool a consumer in today’s times.
According to Samit Sinha, Founder of Alchemist Brand Consulting, a large part of the responsibility is with the clients themselves. “If an ad receives a violation notice, then the agency has very little leeway to be able to challenge the decision. But agencies need to ensure the creativity that they have in mind is not a hyperbole of the situation. They may want to dramatise the product and sometimes in that process, it can end up being inaccurate.”
Additionally the executive opines that brand ambassadors too need to do their part of due diligence and background research before they choose to endorse a brand. When you receive big bucks to endorse a brand, then you can't do something that backfires.
“For instance all the Bollywood celebrities who endorse pan masala, take big fat cheques for it but as soon as the social media storms, they start back peddling,” he added.
The other thing is, in healthcare you have to define what is a permissible level of certain ingredients to make that claim, Parmswaran said. “Can I claim Vitamin-E enriched if I have .01 gram of it in my product? That is where ASCI will have to work on loopholes and tighten the regulations to come down hard on the healthcare brands.”
In healthcare, the impact is severe to even the extent of life and death and therefore, healthcare brands have to be all the more vigilant about the claims they make.
