Censorship in Advertisements

When Pepsodent has to advertise one of it’s products and needs to compare itself with it’s competition to tell us how and why it is better, what they do is create a faint image of the competing brand by using a distinct logo that resembles the logo of the brand they are talking about. If the brand they are talking about is Colgate, they’ll call it Folgate to give you a general idea of where they’re actually leading.

So the final ad will probably read Pepsodent has 50% more power to destroy germs than Folgate along with graphs showing lab tests that give Pepsodent the edge over Folgate.

This is India’s story. Though you finally realize what they are trying to say, you might wonder why they don’t use the name Colgate directly. I guess it’s because of following certain broadcasting regulations and to allow a Colgate ad to come just after a Pepsodent ad(just an imaginary example, though this happens too).

When you see ads on Fox, you realize this never happens in the United States. When a company sees it has an advantage over competing brands, it gives that news full attention through ads displaying the actual competing product. Like I saw an ad of Diet Coke, talking about how it is better than Diet Pepsi with comparison charts talking about sugar levels, etc. I couldn’t find the ad on YouTube, so I did not bother searching elsewhere.

But I did find something very similar in this Dell ad:

I hope you get what I mean. In India, a lot of content is censored on various grounds that are uncalled for. It’s really odd that such practices continue like you see with every new Sprite or Mountain Dew ad.