India’s Ad Industry Shaken After Ford Figo Controversy

Manish Swarup/Associated Press Joe Hinrichs, vice president of Ford, right, and Michael Boneham, then president and managing director of Ford India, at the launch of the Ford Figo car in New Delhi, on March 9, 2010.

MUMBAIâ€"A series of controversial advertisements made by the WPP subsidiary JWT India for Ford Motor has shaken up India’s fast-growing, multibillion-dollar advertising industry.

The ads, which featured cartoons of women bound and gagged in the trunk of a Ford Figo, prompted the resignation of Bobby Pawar, an industry veteran and the chief creative officer and managing partner at JWT India, and Vijay Simha Vellanki, the creative director at Blue Hive, a WPP unit dedicated to managing the Ford business.

“The industry is under serious stress right now on this issue, because Mr. Pawar is such a respected figure,” said Nitesh Thattasery, an execute vice president at Leo Burnett India. “It is a very severe step, asking someone of Bobby Pawar’s stature to leave,” he said, adding that it would not have been a local decision.

Courtesy of afaqs.com Bobby Pawar.

The incident has raised questions about ethics in Indian advertising, an industry that has grown by as much as 11.4 percent each year between between 2006 and 2010, generating revenues of 279 billion rupees ($5.2) in 2011. The industry is expected to grow to 525 billion rupees by 2016.

Indian agencies have embraced a global trend of creating controversial advertisements specifically with the aim of winning international awards, perhaps too zealously, some executives say. These ads, known in India as “scam advertisements” because they are not created to sell products, caused international controversy in 2007, for example.

Then, McCann-Erickson India created three advertisements for Hanes, the underwear company, featuring racist words and anti-gay slurs that were published in the Free Press Journal. “A young team in its excitement and passion for winning awards went overboard. The intention was never to hurt anyone’s sentiments and it was done in complete innocence,” Prasoon Joshi, then the chairman and national creative director of McCann India, said in an apology.

However, Hanes said the incident had been a breach of trust and it resulted in McCann- Erickson losing the Hanes account.

Controversies arise in India because of a difference in sensibility between the Indian advertising industry and international agencies, executives said. “International advertising people play it a lot safer,” said the creative director at another WPP company in Mumbai, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t want to be seen criticizing his peers. “They wouldn’t take as many risks as a developing country like India as they are often more aware of the political implications,” he said. In India, “we lack the knowledge about international icons, we don’t know where to draw the line - here you’ll see people wearing Hitler t-shirts. We don’t always understand the implication of what we are saying and doing,” he said.

While JWT India did not disclose the total number of people fired over the Ford Figo ads, one industry executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said an entire creative team of about 10 from New Delhi were let go. Mr. Pawar had resigned because his team had been asked to leave, he said. “Bobby Pawar is one of the finest and most respected people in the industry and it is sad that he is taking the fall for what his juniors have done,” he said.

“As a leader, this incident happened on my watch,” Mr. Pawar told The Hindu. “I have to take moral responsibility for it.” Mr. Pawar was not immediately available for comment.

Ad executives in India rushed to Mr. Parwar’s defense. “I think it is a gross overreaction on the part of the client and the agency,” said Naresh Gupta, a managing partner at Bang In the Middle, a digital advertising agency based in New Delhi. “It should have been handled far more sensitively and with far more judiciousness.”

The most controversial of three advertisements for the Ford Figo, meant to allude to the Indian hatchback’s spacious trunk, showed former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy flashing a victory sign while driving a vehicle with three scantily clad gagged women in the rear. Two other versions of the advertisement show the reality television star Paris Hilton kidnapping the Kardashian sisters and the Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher abducting three of his rivals.

The advertisements in question were never used for a Ford campaign, but were uploaded by JWT employees on Ads of the World, an international advertising Web site which gives awards for ads submitted by users. They have since been removed from the Web site. Soon after posting, they spread quickly through social media and attracted criticism for their sexist message, particularly as India grapples with numerous high-profile incidents of violence against women.

Ford executives were displeased, to say the least. “All of us were shocked,” said Ford’s global marketing and sales chief, Jim Farley, at the New York International Auto Show on Wednesday, “We’ve updated, of course, all of our creative review process. We take this matter very seriously.” The Indian unit of Ford said, “The posters are contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within Ford and our agency partners.” They added that they were reviewing their approval and oversight processes to ensure that the incident is not repeated.

The practice of “scam ads,” or advertisements created specifically with the aim of winning awards and augmenting the portfolio of creative executives, has become common because advertisements that appeal to a broader market and are used commercially do not often win awards, Indian executives said. “Great advertising - the kind that wins awards - is generally creative, evolved and thought provoking,” Mr. Thattasery said.

“However such ads do not always work with the target group, say for example in rural audiences in India.” When an agency decides an idea will not work in the market, it is often put aside for awards. Part of the award criteria is that the ad be published somewhere, rather be just a conceptual idea, and the Internet has changed the type of attention these ads receive, executives said.

“It’s almost accepting in advertising that you will create some ads specifically for awards - it’s almost like a cottage industry and every agency does it,” Mr. Gupta said. Earlier, the ads would be published in obscure newspapers and go unnoticed, he said, but “the Internet makes it easier to track such things down.”

Whether Ford executives had actually send the Figo “scam” ads before their publication remains an issue of much speculation in India.

According to procedure followed by most advertising agencies, advertisements created for such award shows are sent to the client for approval before being submitted as entries for award shows. “These ads would have had to be approved by Ford India - they could not have been entered for awards without their approval,” said an advertising executive on the condition of anonymity. “There are legal procedures for submissions for awards that include a letter from the client certifying the entry.”

However, JWT India denied this. “These were never intended for paid publication, were never requested by our Ford client and should never have been created, let alone uploaded to the Internet,” they said in a statement. “These posters were created by individuals within the agency and did not go through the normal review and oversight process.”

Advertising executives believe that Indian agencies will tread more cautiously, after the Ford Figo incident. “The industry will be far, far more cautious in making sure that in the future no ad goes for an award without clear client approval,” Mr. Thattasery said. “Award bodies will also be more careful in the future that the unreleased work submitted by agencies has explicit clearance from the client.”