Selling sutta on the ramp?

Activists slam ITC for sponsoring Delhi Fashion Week under the brand name Wills, which has a strong association with cigarettes

Activists slam ITC for sponsoring Delhi Fashion Week under the brand name Wills, which has a strong association with cigarettes

Tobacco control activists have slammed ITC for sponsoring the recent Fashion Week in Delhi under the brand name Wills, which has a strong association with cigarettes.

Activists said in a press release, "The Wills India Fashion Week is held under the Wills Lifestyle brand extension of ITC.

The extension of the brand name to their clothing line, and by effect to this fashion week, makes it a massive brand building effort for the Wills brand."

Dr P C Gupta, director, Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, said, "This is an act of endorsing cigarette brands through seemingly inoffensive platforms.

Young people aspire towards a fashionable lifestyle.

Smoking hot: A model walks the ramp at the Wills India Fashion Week 2010 in New Delhi.

By naming this event under the Wills brand name, ITC is clearly trying to associate smoking with a fashionable lifestyle, influencing many non-smokers to take up smoking as a socially acceptable habit."

Dr Gupta, who practices in Navi Mumbai, termed the Fashion Week as surrogate advertising.

The Other Side

Atul Chand, divisional chief executive, ITC's Lifestyle, said, "The Wills franchise has a considerable reputation of its own, and is not confined to cigarettes.
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The mark stands for excellence of quality, and ITC, as the proprietor of the mark, is legally entitled to use it in connection with any of its products, just like many other multi-product brands such as Tata, Godrej, Samsung, and others.

"It is incorrect to term the sponsorship of the Fashion Week as surrogate advertising for cigarettes."