Mumbai: Lux Cozi has won the legal battle against Amul Macho regarding its latest advertisement starring actor Varun Dhawan. In a significant ruling, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has overruled the complaint filed by the rival innerwear brand stating that there was no similarity between the two ads in terms of concept and executional elements.
Earlier this month, Amul Macho had alleged that Lux Cozi had “blatantly copied” its ‘Toing’ ad from 2007 and subsequently approached Asci to intervene. However, after inspection, the industry watchdog observed that there was no resemblance in the two advertisements. Asci dismissed Amul Macho’s accusation of plagiarism against Lux Cozi as ‘baseless’.
According to the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC), the Lux Cozi’s ad is not at all similar to Amul Macho’s earlier TVC in general layout, copy, slogans, visual presentations, music, or sound effects, so as to suggest plagiarism. The CCC further concluded that Lux’s advertisement was not in contravention of chapter four of the ASCI Code related to fairness in competition and rejected Amul Macho’s complaint.
According to a statement issued by Lux Industries, the win reiterates Lux’s brand equity over baseless claims by Amul Macho.
Lux industries executive director Saket Todi said the Lux Cozi advertisement is unique on individual points as well as in totality, and any semblance is fleeting and only in respect of elements commonly used in the trade, such as shape and colour of the garment. “It is now an established fact that the advertisement bears no similarity whatsoever. The complainant’s advertisement was last aired in 2007, and thereafter, banned. No reputation, goodwill, or brand equity can be vested in publicity/marketing material that has been banned to the public for the last 14 years. We respect the verdict by Asci,” he added.
Mumbai: Amul Macho turned gender stereotypes on its head way back in 2007 when the brand launched the daring “Yeh Toh Bada Toing Hai” TVC for Amul Macho underwear by focusing on female desire. With the jingle achieving cult status, the brand is back over a decade later with the launch of Macho Sporto and a new campaign along similar lines.
Conceptualised by creative agency Leo Burnett and promoted by media agency Madison Media Omega, the Macho Sporto campaign films consist of three films featuring actors Rashmika Mandanna and Vicky Kaushal.
The film portrays Mandanna playing a yoga instructor and Vicky Kaushal as one of her students, depicting different humorous scenarios during their yoga sessions. The brand attempts to playfully legitimise the female gaze.
“Through this campaign, we wanted to address and break regressive old-fashioned gender stereotypes,” said Leo Burnett CEO and chief creative officer for South Asia Rajdeepak Das. “Typically innerwear brands portray conventional male-dominant imagery, but our films depict a role reversal where we normalise and make the woman in control. This is probably the first time where a men’s wear brand is showing a woman taking the lead.”
“We are reviving our iconic campaign ‘Yeh Toh Bada Toing Hai’ with a modern and trendier avatar of Macho Sporto. Although we are advertising men’s underwear, the campaign is centred around a young and confident woman who is empowered enough to gaze at a man she feels attracted to,” said JG Hosiery (parent company of Macho Sporto) MD Navinn Seksaria. “Breaking patriarchal stereotypes, the campaign intends to highlight how today’s women don’t hesitate in making the first move.”
Mumbai: In what can be termed as a ‘battle of the boxers’, men’s innerwear brand Amul Macho has alleged that another Indian brand of men’s innerwear, Lux Cozi has “blatantly copied” its Amul Macho ‘Toing’ ad from 2007. J G Hosiery Pvt Ltd, the makers of Macho Innerwear, has complained to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) regarding what it calls “blatant plagiarism”.
According to Amul Macho, the recently released Lux Cozi ad, featuring actor Varun Dhawan, that is currently being aired on various news channels and on Sony TV, appears to take more than just inspiration from the popular Amul Macho ad with the tagline “Ye To Bada Toing Hai”.
“We find it shocking that a worthy and esteemed competitor appears to want to ride on the creative success of a brand that’s a market leader in its category, by blatantly copying its popular ad concept and executional elements. We hope good reason will prevail and the copied ad will be withdrawn forthwith,” said JG Hosiery Pvt Ltd, CEO, Navin Seksaria.
The company finds the premise of the ad by Lux Cozi to be identical to the Amul Macho Toing ad and the storyline of the Lux Cozi ad to be strikingly similar to their own creative asset.
“It’s a matter of deep concern to J G Hosiery that the woman in the Lux Cozi ad holds up the Lux Cozi underwear to show that her man wears Lux Cozi, implying that Varun Dhawan should stay away, in a similar manner to how it was held up by Sana Khan in the Amul Macho Toing ad,” stated Madison Communications on behalf of Amul Macho in a note to the press. “Amul Innerwear team takes the matter of their creative asset being copied very seriously, believing that the visual similarity of the two ads cannot be a mere coincidence. Both women in the two respective ads hold up the underwear to make a statement about the fact that, ‘My man wears this’.”
Amul Macho further noted that the similarity between the two ads does not end there but has so many common executional elements that JG Hosiery has felt compelled to “call out the copy-cat work and point out what appears to be an opportunistic brand building attempt by Lux Cozi.”
The various executional elements of the Lux Cozi ad film that Amul Macho has taken objection to, include the colour and shape of the underwear used in the former’s ad, the way the woman holds up the object of contention and even the specific expressions of the supporting cast when they see the product in question, apart from the music theme and the setting of the film.
It further alleged that the Lux Cozi ad unfairly tries to take advantage of the brand equity, reputation and goodwill generated by the Amul Macho toing ad, by copying both the concept and executional elements of the brand’s popular ad film and must therefore be restrained from being aired.
Under the fourth chapter related to fairness in competition, the ACSI code states that: “Advertisements shall not be similar to any other advertiser’s earlier run advertisements in general layout, copy, slogans, visual presentations, music or sound effects, so as to suggest plagiarism.”
“While the ASCI code allows competitive advertising including naming a competitor so long as the comparison is fair, plagiarism is making use of someone else’s goodwill or effort for your own benefit, which is a violation of the ASCI code,” ASCI general secretary Manisha Kapoor told IndianTelevision.com, adding that, “A complaint that comes to us will need to be examined more specifically with regards to its elements, and taken through the due process to determine if plagiarism is suggested.”
With regards to this latest complaint of plagiarism, Kapoor stated that any complaint processed by ASCI allows for both the complainant and advertiser views to be tabled, and only after taking into account all the evidence presented, the consumer complaints council will make a recommendation.
Meanwhile, Lux has refuted the allegations made by its competitor. “Our TVC is based on an original idea and conceptualised by our creative agency and is not inspired or motivated by any borrowed ideas,” a Lux Industries spokesperson told ET Brand Equity, further adding, “We feel that the competition is feeling threatened by the success of our TVC and is levelling baseless allegations.”
Yellow Beetle, the agency behind the ad’s concept represented by Daven Munjal, stated, “We wanted to give a new dimension to the Lux Cozi communication, we conceptualised the commercial with the clear aim to target the youth, the commercial has freshness and has the flavour of naughtiness and tongue in cheek communication.”
MUMBAI: Innerwear is no longer a product of necessity but even a lifestyle marker. While the industry only has five major players – Lux, Amul, VIP, Chromozome and Jockey, — in the organised sector, there is still potential for them to tap the untapped consumer who is fickle and changes products as and when there is a new disruptor in the market.
Amul Macho has launched its sub-brand Macho Hint along with a TVC with brand ambassador Tiger Shroff with the tagline ‘Fashion Bade Aram Se’. The company wants to capture 40 per cent market share in fashion innerwear segment by 2020.
The innerwear industry in India is said to be over Rs 30,000 crore. The growth potential is vast as people shift from pyjamas to t-shirts, track pants and boxers.
Macho was launched in 2005 and has become one of the highest selling and fastest growing innerwear brands in the country. Macho operates in the mid-segment innerwear market. Macho Hint director Sandeep Seksaria says, “As part of our business strategy the brand is repositioning itself as a fashion led brand thus we are launching Macho Hint. We are confident that the new range of products in different colours and designs will help us in reaching the masses, especially the customers who are looking for comfort and fashion.”
The brand wants to create a perfect mix of style and comfort and is aimed at the youthful and fashionable consumer. One of the main features of the new range is that none of the prints will be repeated in the next range of products. Made from 100 per cent premium combed cotton, the lowers and uppers guarantee to maintain shape and appearance, wash after wash.
On the marketing front, the products will be advertised heavily on television followed by a bite size of outdoor and digital. On television, the ad starring Shroff will be aired across all major GECs, news channels, movie channels and music channels. Macho Hint has become the associate sponsor for many reality and GEC shows in Hindi and other regional languages that are aired on Sony, Colors and Zee.
Speaking about the heavy investment on television, Seksaria says, “We have always been big on television as that enables us to reach a mass audience. There is no better way to advertise in India other than television.”
It is interesting to note that the brand does not believe in shelling out money for digital on a larger scale. Defending his case, he says, “We talk about OTT being the next big thing for advertisers but how much of the population is actually watching content on OTT platforms? I think only 2-3 per cent! And the audience that is watching content on OTT platforms is not our customer.”
The three key channels to distribute are general trade, modern retail outlet and online. Innerwear as a category relies heavily on general trade which occupies 90 per cent of the market followed by modern trade at 8 per cent and online channels at a mere 2 per cent. Seksaria, however, is optimistic that in the next 10 years, modern trade will contribute to 30-35 per cent of its sale and a major chunk will be from modern trade (60 per cent) which is already growing 100 per cent y-o-y.
The products range of Macho Hint will be available in all modern trade stores India through its strong network of dealers. Priced between Rs 150-250, the products are targeted at males in the age group of 14-45.
Going forward, the company will also launch its casual wear range in February which will include boxers and track pants. That is another untapped market by Indian players which has huge potential. The lounge/casual wear category in India is dominated by international players including Jockey, Jack & Jones, Hanes, Flying Machine along with premium brands like Tommy Hilfiger, U.S Polo and Fcuk.
MUMBAI: The advertising industry was at the receiving end at the International Advertising Association’s (IAA’s) Olive Crown Awards – Asia’s only awards for green initiatives in advertising which were held in Mumbai’s Palladium Hotel over the weekend. Environmentalist and parliamentarian Maneka Gandhi was felicitated with a special award for her years of diligent efforts to get the environment in the nation’s mainstream consciousness and getting regulations passed which saw animals and the coastal zone get protection. She received the recognition from Amitabh Bachchan.
Even as she thanked the advertising industry for bestowing the honor on her, she urged the creative community to be careful while using animals in the communications and commercials that it creates.
She referred to ads in which a pug was used, something which she has highlighted in the past too. “The problem with the ad was that it sparked off a demand for the pug which is not a local animal. Thousands of them were imported and the Indian climate does not suit them. Then these pugs find it very difficult to deliver; most of their stomachs burst during delivery. Owners who could not handle these little cute creatures just abandoned them. And we had hundreds of them turning up at our animal shelters.”
Gandhi then spoke about a TV commercial which featured an orangutan stealing underwear and amusing an Indian housewife. “We noticed that more and more orangutans were being smuggled after that TV commercial was aired,” she said. “We captured three of them headed for Chennai and have been on alert since then. A business man there had got fascinated by the orangutans and had ordered them.”
She told the creative heads and senior marketers present at the awards ceremony at the Palladium Hotel in central Mumbai that they should work on communicating the right environmental messages whenever they can as part of their corporate social responsibility initiatives. And that they should exercise extreme sensitivity while drawing up creative for ads as the content of commercials has a tremendous impact on the general Indian viewing public at home. And in the process it can impact the environment or animals.
The IAA presented Olive Crown Awards to McCann Erickson as the green agency of the year and to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) as the green advertiser of the year for the clean up campaign the two created for Bengaluru.
MUMBAI: Sony Entertainment Television (Set) is targeting advertising revenue of Rs 900 million from the sixth edition of its singing talent hunt reality show, Indian Idol, that airs from 1 June.
Indian Idol moves to a weekend property this time, airing at 8.30 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. In the fifth season, the show started on weekdays as there was no strong fiction property that gave the channel good ratings.
“We are looking at ad revenue of Rs 900 million. We have put Indian Idol on weekends this time as our fiction properties on weekdays are doing well. That was not the case when we aired the fifth season of Indian Idol,” said a source in the company who did not want his name to be revealed.
Sony has kept the marketing spend of the show flat at Rs 80 million while pushing for ad revenue growth as the channel has made significant progress in ratings since the last airing of the property in 2010.
“If you take the media inflation, we should have spent more. But the channel has vastly improved its performance since the fifth season ran in 2010. It has climbed to the No. 2 spot in the Hindi GEC ratings order. This is also the reason why we will use less of television for marketing the show. Besides, we are promoting it more aggressively during the IPL this time,” the source said.
Produced by Fremantle Media India, the singing reality show will air every Friday and Saturday at 8.30 pm.
“The show will be bigger in scale this time. It will penetrate deeper across the country for hunting talent,” said FremantleMedia India MD SK Barua.
Sony has roped in a clutch of sponsors. While Close Up is the presenting sponsor, MTS is powering the show. The associate sponsors on board are Flipkart.com, TVS Tyres, Vivel, Max New York Life Insurance, Amul Macho, Sunsilk and Suzuki Motorcycle.
Indian Idol will run for 26 episodes, positioning itself as ‘Idol behind an idol‘.
“The entire marketing strategy of the show was built around one insight that Indian Idol is a journey from nobody to somebody. And this can’t be an independent journey; it is a journey of emotional support, motivation and inspiration that a person gets on the way to become an idol. This is where the thought of ‘Idol behind an idol’ came,” said Set marketing head Danish Khan.
Sony is creating four TVCs to push the show. “Once we solidified the positioning, we came up with four TVCs, digital, OOH, print, different other media applications. We are setting up a mood for the content. It’s not just about singing but the journey that is also important,” said Khan.
The promotional activities will remain high across the Hindi speaking market (HSM). Apart from Set‘s own network, the channel has booked 8700 TV spots across 20 television channels. The channel has also bought 5000 radio spots on radio channels across the country to promote the show.
The marketing campaign is being launched in two phases. The first phase talks about the new positioning of the show. The second phase will come 10 days prior to the show launch when the channel will start with the ‘countdown’ campaign. The channel will highlight the show’s music and look through the campaign.
The new season will be judged by Anu Malik, Salim Merchant and Sunidhi Chauhan and will be hosted by Hussain and Mini Mathur.
