Advertising is extremely important for the revenue earning of any brand. The liquor and smoking brands had always come under the ethical debate.
Advertising is extremely important for the revenue earning of any brand. The liquor and smoking brands had always come under the ethical debate.
The industry isn’t banned. Smoking and drinking isn’t banned in our country but their endorsements are questioned. The debate is unending. This article isn’t about the rights and wrongs about promoting liquor and tobacco.
Surrogate advertising is a subtle way of promoting the brand name in a different product. For example you call it Bacardi music, the public knows you are talking about liquor.
The products cannot be directly advertised due to all the negative annotations attached. The industry would doom without advertising.
Surrogate advertising comes to the rescue wherein you indirectly talk of the product by just associating the brand name to a different product.
Call it Kingfisher Airlines or better Royal Challengers, the brand name goes out in the form of airline and IPL team.
You remember the ‘Bagpiper’ ads where SRK’s famous dialogue, “Khoob jamega rang jab baithengey teen, aap main aur Bagpiper”?
Public isn’t foolish to think of it as some sort of soda. Of course he was talking about whiskey.
‘Four Square Bravery Awards’ for instance is promoting the cigerrates.
The brand is disguised in a different product form and sold. That is the entire funda of surrogate advertising. What effect it has on audience is again a debatable matter.
But there is actually no loophole to restrict the showcase of the ads. Rather the ads are all about playing with the loopholes. It is an innovative technique of promoting the product, sending the message and reaching out to the target audience without directly talking about the product.
Finally even if surrogate ads are banned there will be ways of coming up with more innovative solutions of marketing the product.
