Social media activism: Think before you advertise

Protests on social media websites against an advertisement for Fastrack sale forces Titan to take it off billboards

Fastrack, Titan's youth brand, was shocked by the backlash to its print and outdoor ad (pictured) released in the run-up to Republic Day, when retailers lure shoppers with discounts and freebies. Titan was offering a flat 20 per cent discount on Fastrack products on the occasion.

The ad shows a model wrapped in nothing but yellow ribbons with the word 'sale' written all over. The comments came thick and fast deriding the ad for objectifying women. But in a first, social media users ran an online petition demanding Titan to pull off the ad, with which the Bangalore-based company has since complied.

For errant advertisers, this is a warning bell, say brand experts. "You have to be careful when you advertise," says Mahesh Chauhan, ex-group chief executive, Rediffusion, who now runs his own agency, Salt Brand Solutions, in Mumbai. "This (ad) clearly appeared to have crossed the line," he said.

Titan executives were not available for comments.

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has taken cognisance of the outrage and asked Titan to explain why it chose to release such an ad. Allen Colaca, secretary general, ASCI, said Titan had a week to respond. "We acted suo moto (on our own) on this matter," Colaco said. "We also received a complaint from a member of the public," he said.

A similar protest against a set of ads posted online for Ford's Figo car in March 2013 showing international celebrities and sportsmen gagged and bound had to be eventually taken off.

The Fastrack ad was posted across billboards in cities in India. A street protest against the ad last week in Kolkata had forced the Titan management to make amends.

India is not alone in this growing trend of social media activism. US retailer GAP two months ago uploaded a poster of Sikh actor Waris Ahluwahlia with model Quentin Jones on its Facebook page, following protests on social media websites against racist graffiti directed at the poster in a New York subway.

The poster, part of a larger campaign by the retailer featuring the actor and the model, had been defaced, with messages on it that Sikhs were terrorists and that they stop driving taxis.

Appalled by the graffitti, journalist and commentator Arsalan Iftikhar, who first saw the comments scrawled on the New York subway poster, tweeted the picture, later picked up by GAP. The company wrote to Iftikhar asking where he had seen the defaced poster, seeking to replace it and subsequently putting up the same picture on its Facebook page.