Are you relying on advertisements?

Are the actors in advertisements required to ensure the quality of the products or services they are promoting? This question has gained importance after the ‘maggi incidence’. Amitabh Bachan and Madhuri Dixit are accused for promoting the product which is later on proved to be poisoned. Most of them opined that how the actors can ensure the quality of products? They are not supposed to ensure the quality rather; they are the people who are there to promote the product.

What do you mean by ‘Promotion’? In fact, it is an inducement by some persons of social acceptance upon common people to buy or use some products or services.  Because of the social acceptance, they are in a position to influence the decisions of common people. They will get huge amounts for creating such mass attraction to the product. There ends the commitment. So the question is, since they have influence over the society, are they responsible for the damages caused to the society?

Technical or production damages will be very well captured by the society within 2 or 3 months after the product is released. In case of issues like Maggi incidence, the facts will be known only when any quality testing or something like that happened. Amitabh Bachan and Madhuri Dixit are in fact promoting a product which is detrimental to the health of the people. Since most of the consumers are children, it increases the responsibility. So they were promoting a product for which they had no idea about the quality. We cannot ignore the responsibility of the manufacturers for ensuring the quality of their products.

In this context, the views of Rajanikanth, Kamal Hassan and Amir Khan will get importance. They are never been to any sort of advertisements. Their view is that, ‘how could I promote a product which is not familiar to me’?

Actors must at least have an idea about the products, its quality parameters and approval requirements etc. before entering into any advertisement contracts. They will commit for a film only after reading the scripts and taking care of so many other things. Likewise, why can’t they show some sort of commitments to the advertisement campaigns also? They are very well paid for the advertisement campaigns.