D&I in Indian advertising

D&I? Diversity & The Inclusiveness.

- SANDEEP GOYAL

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has just put out a report "Mainstreaming Diversity & Inclusiveness in Indian Advertising". It makes for interesting insights.

The heartening news is that India scores well on gender representation. Indian ads showed 31 per cent women as protagonists in 2019. The percentage has gone up substantially in subsequent years - 38 per cent (2020), 34 per cent (2021), 39 per cent (2022), and 45 per cent in 2023.

However, in contrast to most other global markets, India is quite a distance away in terms of celebrating the inherent diversity in its ethnicity and skin colour, according to the ASCI. The global average for different ethnic groups being featured in advertising is 19 per cent. It is as high as 39 per cent in North America and 20 per cent in Europe. In India the score is a poor 3 per cent. In the portrayal of diversity of skin colour, the global average is 27 per cent - a massive 54 per cent in North America, 30 per cent each in Latin America and Europe, but a piffling 4 per cent in India. To be honest, I am not sure I would agree with these statistics. There is surely an error somewhere there.