In today’s WSJ:

As the Selling Gets Hot,
India Tries to Keep Cool
New-Age Dilemma:
Too Sexy? Just Fun?
The Chocolate Man
By NIRAJ SHETH in New Delhi and TARIQ ENGINEER in Mumbai
September 9, 2008

Some hot new ads for men’s deodorant are causing a high-level stink.

Last month, the Indian government suspended a television advertisement for Axe men’s deodorant, made by Mumbai-based Hindustan Unilever Ltd. The ad shows a man transform into a walking chocolate figurine after spraying himself with Axe’s Dark Temptation deodorant. As he walks through the city, women throw themselves at him, licking and biting off various parts of his body.

YouTube
A scene from an Indian TV commercial for men’s deodorant.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting stopped the ad from broadcasting after receiving a complaint from a viewer who found offensive a shot of a woman biting the chocolate man’s bottom.

The ministry has referred the ad to the Advertising Standards Council of India, the industry’s self-regulation body, which has yet to issue its verdict. The ministry has the final say once the ad-industry council has issued its opinion. Officials at the ministry declined several requests for comment.

The scramble over the Axe ad shows how the traditionally conservative country is still trying to decide how much sexuality to allow in advertising. India’s growing economy and rapid internationalization are adding to the issue, as they challenge India’s homegrown mores in new ways. The deodorant ad is part of an international campaign by Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch company that holds a majority stake in Hindustan Unilever. The ad originally played in Argentina, followed by Europe, before coming to India.

In a statement, Hindustan Unilever said it will abide by the government’s final decision but insisted that the ad wasn’t intended to be inappropriate. “Our consumer research showed the advertisement was humorous and witty in expressing the new fragrance’s promise of being as irresistible as chocolate,” the statement said.

So far, the Axe ad has been the only body-spray ad to face scrutiny from the government, even though Unilever’s competitors have run racy ads of their own. In one for Wild Stone body spray, a woman bumps into a male stranger, causing her to drop her belongings. As he stoops to help her, she catches a whiff of his deodorant and begins to fantasize about the two of them in bed, followed by shots of their hands clasped and her rearranging her ruffled clothes. Wild Stone is made by McNroe Chemical Private Ltd., based in Haridwar in the Indian state of Uttarakhand.

Because men’s body sprays are aimed at young men, it isn’t surprising that the ads are risque. The market for men’s grooming products overall in India stood at $320.9 million last year, according to data from Euromonitor, and is expected to grow to $366.4 million this year. Unilever is the market leader in deodorants, with its Axe, Lynx and Ego brands commanding 61% of the market. Last year, sales of deodorants in India totaled $25 million.

Traditional taboos are easing in other areas as well. Billboards of scantily clad starlets line the streets in Mumbai and New Delhi, for example, while kissing is no longer uncommon in Bollywood movies.

Still, the country, especially outside cities, remains conservative. Last year, a court in Jaipur, in the state of Rajasthan, issued an arrest warrant for actor Richard Gere after he kissed Indian actress Shilpa Shetty at an AIDS awareness event in New Delhi, under charges of breaking public-obscenity laws. Mr. Gere quickly left the country, and the Indian Supreme Court later threw out the case.

The chocolate Axe ad isn’t the first the government has pulled. Last year, it yanked commercials for two underwear brands. In one for Amul Macho underwear, a young woman comes to a river to wash her husband’s clothes. She pulls a pair of men’s boxer shorts from the laundry pile and begins to wash them by hand, giving sultry looks to the camera and throwing her head back in a suggestive manner. The ad ends with a breathy female voice saying: “Amul Macho. Crafted for fantasies.”

Pushpinder Singh, head of Saints & Warriors, the creative agency that designed the Amul Macho ad, says it resounded with the targeted audience — young Indian men — even if the Indian government wasn’t amused. “The thinking was very simple — inner wear is a surrogate for male sexuality,” he said. “If we can show a woman fantasizing about a man, what greater compliment to a man’s sexuality?”

Despite the government’s disapproval, ad-agency executives say sexually charged ads are working with the target audience. “I wouldn’t say we’re as ready as the West is, but we’re changing rapidly and there is an increasing tolerance even among those who aren’t targeted by the ads,” said Sam Balsara, a former president of ASCI and chairman of Mumbai-based advertising agency Madison World. “I personally didn’t find the Chocolate Man ad vulgar or offensive.”

Alan Collaco, secretary of the ASCI, has started organizing road shows to help companies better understand the boundaries of indecency in advertising. For the past two months he has given companies presentations explaining the industry body’s code. At each stop, he screens ads that have breached the ASCI code, along with others that didn’t, to illustrate the differences. We want “to make companies more aware and to sensitize them to what the public thinks about various ads,” he said.

In Europe, it’s socialism, not fascism. At least not yet. The people are _not_ being given the right to vote, though, so it certainly isn’t democracy. Facism is nationalistic, whereas they’re trying to establish the united Europe. I don’t think it’s going to happen…I suspect that somehow there’s going to be a big blow-out. Time will tell.

http://energycommerce.house.gov/cmte_mtgs/FC040208MU/FUAT.support.ltr.pdf.

Cornyn, last I checked, is a conservative, as are the majority of religious groups that signed that letter.

Or this:

(http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:c-s2rtDizEoJ:www.reason.com/news/show/124939.html+evangelicals+against+tobacco+advertising+us+america&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=18&gl=us)

In 2004 the board of directors of the National Association of Evangelicals adopted an “Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility” affirming that “because clean air, pure water, and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order, government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation.” Huckabee, the evangelical candidate, says plainly that he wants to be “a good steward of the earth”—and, to that end, favors an economy-wide “cap-and-trade” system to control greenhouse gases.

The heirs of the Social Gospel have also enthusiastically embraced and promoted modern campaigns for clean living. Contemporary anti-smoking campaigns resemble the old crusades against demon rum, particularly in the willingness to go beyond educational efforts and push draconian government controls. Campaigns against lifestyle diseases are just beginning. In 2006 New York City public health officials began requiring medical labs to report the results of blood sugar tests for all the city’s diabetics directly to the health department. This is the first time that any government has tracked people with a chronic disease. The New York City Department of Health will analyze the data to identify those patients who are not adequately controlling their diabetes. They will then receive letters or phone calls urging them to be more vigilant about their medications, have more frequent checkups, or change their diet. If nagging is not sufficient, more coercive steps may be taken. For example, in a 2004 editorial in the American Journal of Public Health, New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Friedan called for “local requirements on food pricing, advertising, content, and labeling; regulations to facilitate physical activity, including point-of-service reminders at elevators and safe, accessible stairwells; tobacco and alcohol taxation and advertising and sales restrictions; and regulations to ensure a minimal level of clinical preventive services.”

Second, you might want to see what the for-against count was on that ruling that Justice Thomas authored, before you call that ruling indicative of an exclusively conservative ruling. The fact is that the Supreme Court is generally and universally hawkish on free speech, but Thomas does not reflect the views of most conservatives whose behavior I have observed over the years. Just ask the poor store managers at Walmart, who had to deal with the obnoxious speech police of the right.

Third, I find it amusing that conservatives say that they are only concerned about the use of public funds (e.g., used for offensive art) or public goods (e.g., used for offensive talk radio) but then they push for puritanical rules regarding our own advertising freedom (e.g., cannot advertise spirits except after a given hour–used to be not at all–and heavily restrict tobacco advertising, etc.)

There you go again, dg.

Tobacco on Television

In 1967, the Fairness Doctrine required that all TV stations broadcast 1 anti-smoking public service announcement (PSA) for every 3 cigarette ads that aired. These PSA’s were very effective in the war against smoking.

In 1969, Congress proposed a ban on all cigarette advertising on TV and radio. As expected, the tobacco companies were initially against it. However, they soon realized that a ban on TV commercials would free up funds for other types of advertising, and would also remove the anti-smoking PSA requirement. Rather than fight the inevitable, they decided to cooperate, and the proposal was signed into law by President Nixon in 1970.

The ban took effect on January 2, 1971, in order to give the cigarette companies one final chance to advertise during the New Year’s Day bowl games on TV.

(source: http://www.angelfire.com/retro2/lisanostalgia/70sbuyme.html)

The beginning of the end for tobacco advertising was the fairness doctrine, hardly a conservative principal. I remember the fairness doctrine in the 1960′s and how it was used to drive religious broadcasters off the air.

As to alcohol advertising:

Justice Thomas first assumed a prominent role in commercial speech jurisprudence when he authored the Court’s unanimous 1995 decision in Rubin v. Coors Brewing Co. In Rubin the Court struck down the portion of the Federal Alcohol Administration Act (FAAA) that prohibited the display of alcoholic content on beer labels.

In this case Thomas used an exacting Central Hudson analysis to scrutinize the government’s interests in preventing “strength wars” among brewers and in facilitating state enforcement. Thomas acknowledged the “strength wars” interest, but said the labeling ban did not directly advance that interest and was more extensive than necessary.

By the following year, however, Justice Thomas had come to embrace the uncompromising vision of Virginia Pharmacy over the formulaic Central Hudson balancing test. In 44 Liquormart v. Rhode Island, Thomas called for a fundamental revision of the Court’s approach to commercial speech.

The 44 Liquormart Court had to determine whether a Rhode Island restriction on alcohol price advertising designed to curb consumption violated commercial speech rights. The Court unanimously invalidated the law, causing one First Amendment commentator to the refer to the Court as “a fierce defender of free speech.”

The fiercest defender, however, was unmistakably the much-maligned Justice Thomas. While the other Justices invalidated the state law under the Central Hudson test (for reasons similar to those in Rubin), Thomas boldly articulated a vision of commercial speech better in line with the Virginia Pharmacy understanding of the First Amendment: protection for commercial and noncommercial speech alike.

Unlike the Justices who strongly reaffirmed Central Hudson, Thomas articulated an analysis that ran much deeper and purer for commercial speech proponents. Instead of reinvigorating Central Hudson, Thomas embarked on a much grander course: the elimination of the Court’s distinction between commercial and noncommercial speech. Decrying the Court’s “sudden turn” away from Virginia Pharmacy in Central Hudson, Thomas concluded:

“I do not see a philosophical or historical basis for asserting that ‘commercial’ speech is of ‘lower value’ than ‘noncommercial’ speech. Indeed, some historical materials suggest to the contrary. … Nor do I believe that the only explanations that the Court has ever advanced for treating ‘commercial’ speech differently from other speech can justify restricting ‘commercial’ speech in order to keep information from legal purchasers so as to thwart what would otherwise be their choices in the marketplace.”

http://www.mediainstitute.org/digest/97fall/hudson.html

Last time I checked, Justice Thomas was considered a conservative.