Under the Advertising Guidelines issued by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) in 2022, the shapeshifting term ‘surrogate advertising’ was, for the first time, named and shamed as ‘an advertisement for goods, product or service, whose advertising is otherwise prohibited by law, by circumventing such prohibition or restriction and portraying it to be an advertisement for other goods, product or service, the advertising of which is not prohibited or restricted by law….’
Yes, that’s quite a mouthful. But it’s basically the same concept as catching that boy in class with a dirty magazine tucked inside his physics textbook.
There’s news now that highly-strung headmistresses in the central government are planning to soon prohibit liquor companies from using surrogate advertising and sponsoring events. Try and have Ranveer Singh endorse ‘party events’ or ‘tonic water’ that bear the same name and a very suspiciously similar logo to a tobacco or liquor company or brand, and they’ll slap you with a penalty of up to ₹50 lakh, with Ranveer looking at a possible 3-5 yr ban. It’s as much a planned crackdown on evangelism of sinful things as it is on smart-alecky cryptography.
Lucky that ITC‘s ‘diversifications’ into hotels and FMCG products took off and are plentifully visible. Otherwise, they may have got hauled up for surrogating their ‘cancer sticks’. Or the International Man of Mystery Vijay Mallya would have been India’s ‘Top Wanted Wearing a Belt Above His Waistline’ long before defaulting in our stars for cunningly advertising his beer by wanting people to fly Kingfisher (high).
The main point to note, your honour, is that if you are surrogating, ensure that your surrogate product a) exists, b) exists in enough volume to comfort goodie-goodies that you’re selling bhajans, not the devil’s incantation if the bhajans are played backwards. I’m still searching for those Royal Challenge ‘CDs and cassettes’ in those ads NOT advertising any liquor product. But the concept itself is fascinating. Surrogate advertising is the marketing equivalent of the double-entendre, the paronomasia or pun where both meanings exist simultaneously, and if someone objects, you can always say – with practised indignation – that you were meaning the other meaning, sir! Art has been working on this kind of double entendres for ages. ‘What, pornography? No, no, philistine, how dare you call it smut! It’s tasteful erotica!’ Poets have revelled in this showing one thing and saying another. John Donne’s 1633 immortal opening lines of his sonnet, ‘The Good-Morrow,’ for instance – ‘I wonder by my troth, what thou and I/ Did, till we loved? Were we not wean’d till then?/ But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly?’ – remains a hidden gem on open display for admiration-cum-chuckle for those who can snatch the meaning.
And there we have it. What is it that worries the grandma’ams so much about surrogate advertising? A beer drinker will know that a promo showing film stars on a rooftop dancing away to Tuborg drinking water is shadow-vertising. But for a viewer who isn’t familiar with Tuborg as a beer brand, why would he or she think a brand promoting water really wants him or her to buy beer? Why would you think that the Nobel Peace Prize was established by the inventor of dynamite unless you already know that?
Surrogate advertising is the domain of a consumer already in the know about the ‘hidden’ message. Someone unaware of it will keep wondering what all the fuss (and business model) is about brands selling playing cards, glass sets, leisure and entertainment events, water… It merely reassures the buyer of the brand – that isn’t allowed to be advertised, but allowed to be sold – being ‘upmarket’ enough to have these strange but captivating ads.
Quite like mystical political slogans and catchphrases, actually. When someone says ‘Tukre tukre gang’, ‘Khela hobey,’ or ‘Make America Great Again,’ one is talking about kebabs, sports, and patriotism, no? Yes?
