Ethics and narratives: An analysis of commercials of patanjali ayurveda

Abstract

Introduction: Advertising is used as an effective tool to promote various products and ideas in the desired economic goals. In contemporary time digital media has been used as a powerful medium, it has the potential of reaching millions of consumer. In such conditions, advertisers have influenced society through embedded content such as dialogues, text and visual narratives. These Deceptive practices in advertising have created challenges for regulatory bodies. Although the Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI,1985) were formulated various codes of conduct to control misleading advertisements. In this paper, commercials of Patanjali Ayurveda, an Indian consumer goods company that has reached new heights in the international market has been studied. Objectives: This study aims to analyse the narratives of TV commercials of Patanjali products, to examine the ASCI codes and ethics in advertisements of Patanjali and the audience perception about the Patanjali advertisements. Methods: Keeping the study objectives in view, the authors adopted a narrative analysis method for examining the content of selected advertainments. The questionnaire was administered through a google form. A random sample from the target audience group was selected for the study. Results: A total of one hundred and eighteen respondents responded to the survey. In which 44% and 49% of respondent feel that Patanjali has used patriotic and cultural themes for promoting their products. 51% of respondent feel that boycotting the other products is not justified and 21% of respondents think that linking patriotism in the marketing of goods is beneficial, 45% of respondents believe that it is not justified. The majority of respondent believes that promoting negative sentiments in advertising practices is not good for the country’s social fabric and economic goals. Conclusion: The study has found that the cosmetic and dairy products ads had included misleading content in the narratives; the emotions of patriotism and faith have been used for the economic benefit of Patanjali by using a national icon, symbols and false claims in their advertisements. They appreciated social stereotypes and unfairly targeted competitive MNCs through the ads narratives. it promotes unfair competition in the market. Also, some advertisements of the Patanjali products has violated the ASCI codes and fined for harmful and misleading content by the regulatory bodies. Although such ads were banned for airing on television, all these ads continue to exist on digital media under the name of Patanjali Ayurveda and ASCI is failed to ban such ads on Digital media platforms.