Recently, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) undertook an exceptional step of suspending two offensive advertisements for a deodorant that were in serious breach of its Code by being offensive to women.
The ads in question were of Layer’r Shot, a deodorant brand, which were accused of promoting rape culture and being demeaning and insensitive to women. In the first ad, three men are seen entering a room of a young couple. The men first make suggestive remarks and then advance toward the woman because of which, the woman is shown to be afraid. However, the men instead pick up the Shot deodorant bottle. The second ad is set in a supermarket where a woman hears a group of men saying “There are four of us but one of you” in Hindi. The woman is shocked at first but relaxes later on when the men pick up the Shot deodorant bottle on the aisle behind her instead.