People criticised a brand’s perfume ads for allegedly promoting rape culture, and hours later, actor-filmmaker Farhan Akhtar, actor Richa Chadha, and singer Sona Mohapatra also tweeted about it. Farhan said that the people who made the video had “tasteless and twisted minds.” Farhan wrote on Twitter, “What incredibly tasteless and twisted minds it must take to come up with, approve, and make these stinky “gang rape” innuendo body spray ads..!! Shameful.”
Richa Chadha shared a tweet and said, “This ad is not a mistake. A brand has to make a lot of decisions before it can make an ad. Creatives, script, agency, client, casting, etc. Does everyone think it’s funny to rape someone? Revelatory! This brand and the company that made this ad need to be sued for the filth they’re serving.”
Sona posted a tweet with the words, “Theme: gang-rape. I felt sick when I saw it here on my Twitter timeline, and I’m not sure if giving them more attention is better or worse.”
In one ad for Layer’r body spray, a couple was having a romantic moment in a room. Three men walked in and gave hints that they would also shoot. One of the men took a bottle of perfume because the woman thought they were talking about her.
In another ad, four men standing behind a woman in a store were shown. Then, one of the men said, “There are four of us, but only one of us will get a shot.” Then, when one of them went to get a single bottle of perfume from a rack, the shocked woman turned to them in a strange way. A user named Smish Designs posted the two ads on their Instagram account earlier. During the England vs. New Zealand cricket match, the ads were shown on TV.
According to the news agency ANI, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has already told the company to stop running the ad. According to the advertising code, an investigation has also been started. A lot of people were upset about the ad on social media, which made the government take action.
In a letter to Twitter and YouTube, the I&B Ministry said, “The above-mentioned videos are harmful to the portrayal of women in the interest of decency or morality and in violation of rule 3(1)(b)(ii) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which, among other things, says that users shall not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update, or share any information that is insulting or
“It should be said that the videos in question were also shown on TV. In this way, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), which sets the Code for self-regulation in TV advertising in accordance with rule 7(2)(ix) of the Cable Television Network Rules 1994, has also found that the video goes against its rules. In this case, ASCI has told the advertiser that the ad needs to be taken down right away,” the letter said.