pigsandwings impact: ASCI hauls up XXX condoms

Not really. Unlikely that anyone at the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has read this blog. Unlikely that Sharmila Tagore, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi or SK Arora have read the blog. If you haven’t read the previous post on XXX flavoured condoms, click here. Well, at least we were the first to make a noise about it.
To cut a long story short, the manufacturers of XXX flavoured condoms (you can’t get more original than that), have been asked to immediately withdraw the TVC by the ASCI. That’s all ASCI can do: ask. They cannot enforce. Adding muscle to ASCI’s request is Sharmila Tagore, Censor Board Chairman. She, too, asks. She cannot ban it either. Tagore felt that, perhaps, DKT India (the manufacturer of the originally named XXX flavoured condoms) was targeting only “raunchy teenagers”. Therefore, it ought not to be telecast during the Champions Trophy as the programme is assuredly for family viewing (Mandira nothwithstanding).
The product, according to Sutosi Batliwala, GM Marketing, DKT India, would encourage those “who did not use condoms because they were repulsed by the smell of latex,” and not because they wanted to promote oral sex.
Tagore ( I kid you not here) felt the campaign was not “in good taste”.
The Times of India article (where I read about the ASCI request) calls for a couple of whether-pigs-have-wings questions. How come there is absolutely no debate on why SET MAX accepted the release order and agreed to telecast the ads? Why didn’t Messrs. ASCI, Dasmunsi, Tagore and Arora ask SET MAX to stop airing the commercial?
Hello?