MUMBAI: Eenadu director I Venkat has been elected chairman of the Board of the Advertising Standards Council of India (Asci).
Leo Burnett chairman of India sub-continent Arvind Sharma was elected vice-chairman; and GroupM Media India CEO-South Asia Vikram Sakhuja was re-appointed as the honorary treasurer.
Venkat replaces Aditya Birla Management Corporation director-group corporate services Rajiv Dube.
As a member of the board of governors for five years, Venkat has provided active support to self-regulation in the advertising movement.
Dube said, "It has been a privilege for me to have served as the chairman of Asci and I step down from the position with the satisfaction of a progressive year on self regulation in advertising behind me, for which I would like to thank all who supported strengthening the movement further."
Venkat said, "It is my honour to be elected as the chairman of an organisation which has been providing remarkable service to the Indian masses and ad industry by effectively self regulating advertising content over past 26 years. With the support of the Asci‘s Board and the Consumer Complaint Council (CCC) I will endeavor to further improve the awareness and usage of Asci. I urge the ad sector, the regulators, civil society activists and above all, the general public to actively seek Asci‘s services and also provide suggestions for its improvement."
The advertiser members of the new board of governors are Agro Tech Foods‘ Narendra Ambwani, Aditya Birla Management Corporation‘ Rajiv Dube, Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care‘s Shantanu Khosla and Hindustan Unilever‘s Gopal Vittal.
The media members on the board are Google India‘s Rajan Anandan and HT Media‘s Benoy Roychowdhury.
BBH India‘s Subhash Kamath, RK Swamy BBDO‘s Srinivasan Swamy, Perfect Relations‘ Dilip Cherian, IBS‘s Dhananjay Keskar, Brandscapes Consultancy‘s Pranesh Misra and Partha Rakshit Associates‘ Partha Rakshit are other members on the new board of governors.
During the year 2010-11, the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) met 12 times and considered 777 complaints against 190 advertisements. Of these, complaints against 104 ads were upheld, while 80 were not upheld and six were considered non-issues. In 84 cases, the complaint upheld ads have been voluntarily withdrawn or modified as per the CCC‘s decisions resulting in over 80 per cent compliance rate.
