Celebrities liable for misleading ads?

The Maggi fracas may have embroiled three of our big-shot celebrity endorsers – Amitabh Bachchan, Madhuri Dixit-Nene and Priti Zinta – but celebrity endorsements is big business in India, and from all accounts keep growing bigger.

Endorsements are a lucrative line of income for celebrities, given how nearly every second brand uses a famous face to induce people to buy it. According to a 2013 paper authored by IIM-A faculty, the celebrity endorsement business was worth around Rs 1,000 crore in 2010.

Shah Rukh Khan, the most prolific brand ambassador, earned a cool Rs 202 crore last year (as per the 2014 Forbes celebrity list) from endorsing as many as 22 brands. Dixit-Nene, earns much less. Marketeers say, she charges around Rs 50 lakh per day of shoot. Amitabh Bachchan demands anywhere from Rs 2-3 crore, they say, which is also how much star cricketers like Virat Kohli can expect to get paid.

Santosh Desai, veteran advertising professional, now MD and CEO of Futurebrands, feels that given Maggi had the required quality clearances from government agencies, it is unfair to expect that over and above there will be a scrutiny by the celebrities, and then retrospectively hold them to account. "This is just the least important aspect of the controversy, and everyone's jumped at it," Desai says. "And if the are at fault, what about the TV channels and newspapers?"

But, the Maggi muddle has definitely raised a debate on the issue.

Teena Sharma, consumer activist, says, "What about all those celebrities who endorse pan masalas and fairness creams? And then there are all those surrogate ads. I remember a few years ago, Ajay Devgn was endorsing club sodas of the same brand name as a whiskey and his film Satyagraha was to release there was a half hour long programme on TV during which the ad was playing constantly." Sharma has filed a PIL in the Delhi high court against such ads.

Ashim Sanyal of Voice, a consumer activism body and a member of the Central Consumer Protection Council, says the proposed amendments to the Consumer Protection Act, currently with the inter-ministerial committee and due to be introduced in the next parliamentary session, have specific provisions to hold celebrities liable for misleading advertisements.