![]() Commercial stigmatization could cost marketers dear at times, as Kent RO found last year when its ads for atta and bread makers showing household helps as possible covid-infection carriers came in for flak and had to be withdrawn. Little wonder then that innocuous celebrations by Indians of Pakistani cricket victories possess the potential of transferring the stigmatization to the celebrating individuals. An Amul ad in 2020 to coincide with TikTok’s ban in India depicted the Amul girl fighting a Chinese dragon, thus ‘othering’ China in the process. Take the ‘Mauka Mauka’ campaign on Star Sports in 2019, or many of the cricket ads before an India-Pakistan match that rely on jingoism, stigmatizing Pakistan as ‘the other’. However, marketers may also be guilty of fanning such stigmatization for their own commercial interests. Stigmatization in India typically draws upon historical and socio-cultural forces. Marketers need to understand this phenomenon and then address it. Stigmatization is of concern because of unwarranted and exaggerated perceptions of actual product attributes, risks and associations, and its potential to hurt both the products/entities and users associated with them. Stigmatization involves two aspects: One, it differentiates the stigmatized ‘object’/entity based on a perceived norm, and two, it devalues the deviant ‘object’/entity. Marketplace stigma has been defined as the labelling, stereotyping and devaluation by and of various commercial stakeholders- including consumers, companies and employees, stockholders and institutions- and their offerings, such as products, services and experiences. While such attacks and ad withdrawals cause much consternation among intellectuals and liberals who lament the death of progressive values, the issue should be seen against the larger framework of marketing and the phenomenon of stigmatization in the marketplace. Other companies in India have also faced ire over advertisements, including Hindustan Unilever for Surf Excel, Mankind Pharma, Ceat Tyres, Manyavar and Myntra. With #BoycottTanishq trending on Twitter, the company was forced to drop it. ![]() Last year, a Tanishq commercial depicting an inter-faith marriage faced a similar backlash on social media, as it was accused of promoting ‘love jihad’ and ‘fake secularism’. In the case of Dabur, it was an ad showing a same-sex couple celebrating the Hindu festival of Karva Chauth, while Fabindia’s Diwali-themed ‘culturally inappropriate’ ad showed a collection named Jashn-e-Riwaaz. ![]() Several companies and brands, such as Tanishq, Fabindia and Dabur, have been in the eye of a ‘stigmatization’ storm, with their ‘progressive’ advertising being criticized and attacked for upsetting certain social ‘norms’. ![]()
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