When everything is advertising, why is regulation still stuck in the past?

When a 15-year-old cricketer like Vaibhav Suryavanshi walks onto the field wearing a jersey carrying the name of Oaksmith or more precisely, its packaged water surrogate, it does more than raise eyebrows. It exposes a widening gap between how communication works today and how regulation still chooses to define it.

Predictably, Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) supposedly responded by clarifying that this was a sponsorship arrangement, not an advertisement, and therefore outside its immediate purview. Technically, that position is defensible. Strategically, it feels increasingly inadequate.

Because here’s the truth: Advertising is no longer confined to “ads.”

The Death of Traditional Definitions

We are living in an era where:

• Influencers are media
• Content is commerce
• Sponsorship is storytelling
• Visibility is endorsement

ASCI itself has evolved to recognise this—bringing influencer marketing, social media content, and gender sensitivity within its ambit. But the Suryavanshi incident reveals a blind spot:

The regulatory lens is still format-driven, while communication has become fluid.

The Problem Is Not Legality. It Is Influence.

Surrogate advertising in India has always occupied a curious space; legally tolerated, culturally debated.

The logic is simple:

• You cannot advertise alcohol
• But you can advertise something else with the same brand name

So whisky becomes water. Or music CDs. Or soda.

But the consumer’s mind is not so easily fooled.

In this case, the brand memory is unmistakably alcohol-first.
The water brand if it even has independent recall at all, is incidental. Personally I have never heard of the water brand.

This is not about what the jersey said.
It is about what people saw.

When the Messenger Changes the Message

What amplified the discomfort here was not just the brand, but the carrier of the brand. A minor.

When a 15-year-old athlete becomes a walking billboard, even indirectly for a brand strongly associated with alcohol, the equation shifts:

• From visibility → to implicit endorsement
• From marketing tactic → to ethical question

It raises a simple but important concern:

Can the innocence of youth be used to reinforce the recall of an adult product even through a surrogate?

ASCI’s Crossroads Moment

ASCI is not wrong. But it may no longer be asking the right question.

The issue is not whether this was “advertising” in the traditional sense.
The issue is whether it functioned like advertising in the consumer’s mind.

And if it did, then regulation cannot afford to sit behind semantic boundaries.

Time to Regulate Communication, Not Just Advertising

Both ASCI and the Department of Consumer Affairs need to confront a fundamental shift:

Any form of communication today can create commercial influence.

Which means:

• Sponsorships
• Branded content
• Contextual placements
• Merchandise and apparel

…must all be viewed through the same lens of consumer impact and societal responsibility.

Because the risk is no longer about misleading claims alone.
It is about subtle persuasion, cultural normalisation, and proxy endorsement.

The Larger Question

If it looks like advertising, behaves like advertising, and embeds itself in memory like advertising, should it still escape scrutiny simply because it isn’t labelled as one?

Closing Thought

Surrogate advertising has survived because it exploits the gap between law and perception. But that gap is closing.

And unless regulation evolves from controlling “ads” to understanding influence in all its avatars, we will continue to debate symptoms while the system adapts faster than the rules meant to govern it.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.