The Advertising Standards Council of India ASCI rejected a complaint registered by Amul Macho. The complaint was filed on the grounds that the innerwear brand Lux Cozi plagiarized their advertisement campaign.
JG Hosiery, which owns the Amul Macho brand, alleged that Lux Cozi had plagiarized their TOING advertisement of 2007 in its latest advertisement campaign featuring Varun Dhawan.
Amul contended that the advertisement is still one of the most liked advertisements on google and the storyline of the Lux campaign is quite similar to that of Amul TINGO. AMUL alleged that the company tries to seek unfair advantage of brand equity, reputation, and goodwill and brought immediate action against them.
However, Lux Industries Lux Industries, the owner of the Lux Cozi brand, responded to the complaint by claiming that it appeared the complaint was filed to slander Lux’s reputation in the public eye and waste the time of the ASCI’s Consumer Complaints Council (CCC).
Lux also provided a list of differences to demonstrate how the concept, content, and expression of both advertisements were completely different from one another, and so there could be no comparison.
Lux informed the CCC that Amul’s advertising had sparked debate shortly after its publication in 2007 due to its “objectionable and indecent material.”
As a result, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting prohibited advertising from being broadcast on television in any format. Thus, there was no issue with exploiting any brand equity or goodwill.
“No reputation and/or goodwill can be said to have accrued in favor of the Lux’s advertisement on account of it having been banned by the Central Government of India,” they said.
The CCC determined that Lux’s commercial did not violate the ASCI code and dismissed Amul’s complaint, noting that the two advertisements had very little in common.
Lux was represented by a Naik Naik & Co. team that included Deputy Managing Partner Madhu Gadodia, Associate Partner Deepak Deshmukh, and Senior Associate Sujoy Mukherji
