Comparative Advertising In India: The Line Before Disparagement

Comparative advertising works. That is why brands keep doing it despite the risk.

A direct comparison is the fastest way to move a consumer who already has a habit. It gives them a reason to switch that a generic benefit claim never will. Indian categories from detergents to paints to fintech have been built on it.

It is also the single fastest route to an injunction. Not a notice. An injunction, which stops the campaign while everyone argues.

So treat it as a risk-weighted decision, not a moral one. Comparative advertising is legitimate. It is just expensive to get wrong.

Comparison is allowed. Denigration is not

Indian practice has settled on a distinction that is easy to state and hard to apply. You may compare. You may not denigrate.

The general shape of it, reflected in the ASCI code on comparative advertising and in a long line of Indian court reasoning, is roughly this. Comparison should be on factual, verifiable and relevant attributes. The comparison should be like for like. The overall impression should not mislead. And you can say your product is better without saying the other product is bad.

That last one is where brands trip. There is a real difference between our detergent removes more stains in a single wash and their detergent leaves your clothes dirty. The first is a performance claim about you. The second is an attack on them. The first needs evidence. The second needs evidence and still invites a fight.

Courts in India have generally been more tolerant of puffing your own product than of running down someone else’s, even where the underlying facts are similar. Tone, imagery and overall impression matter as much as the literal words. A technically accurate statement delivered with a sneer can still be read as denigration.

The exact standards sit in a mix of statute, self-regulatory codes and case law that moves. Do not run a comparative campaign on the basis of a summary like this one. Get it reviewed by counsel who works in this area.

Naming the competitor raises the bar

Brands often assume that naming a rival makes the ad honest and therefore safer. It works the other way around.

The moment you name a competitor, three things change. Your evidence has to cover their product as well as yours, which means you need testing on a product you do not control, obtained fairly, on a current formulation. The comparison must be current, so if they reformulate your file goes stale and your ad becomes false without you touching it. And you have handed a specific, identifiable party a direct commercial injury to point at, which is precisely what makes urgent relief available to them.

Practical requirements before you name anyone. Test the competitor product on the same protocol as yours, ideally through an independent lab. Use current market samples with batch and date records, purchased through normal retail. Make sure the attribute you compare is material to the buying decision, because comparing an irrelevant attribute reads as a trick. State the basis of comparison on the creative itself, clearly enough to be read at normal viewing distance. And retest on a schedule, because your evidence has a shelf life.

Implied comparison and lookalike packaging

Most disputes we see do not involve a named competitor at all.

Implied comparison is comparison. If your ad shows an unbranded rival in a pack shape, colour scheme and typeface that the whole category recognises, you have named them. The blurred logo does not help. Indian courts have consistently looked at whether ordinary consumers would identify the target, not at whether the trade mark was technically visible.

The riskiest formats in this space are simple to list. The ordinary detergent or ordinary cream framing, where the ordinary product is visually a specific brand. The side-by-side demonstration with an unbranded competitor whose pack silhouette is unmistakable. The leading brand phrasing in a category with one obvious leader. And the switching narrative, where a character abandons a recognisable product.

Lookalike packaging is a related but distinct exposure. When your artwork borrows the trade dress of a market leader, you are not making a comparative claim, you are riding on their recognition. That belongs to a different body of law and we have covered brand and mark protection separately. The overlap worth knowing is that a lookalike pack combined with a comparative message is the strongest possible case against you, because it shows both intent and consumer confusion in one asset.

What usually triggers urgent relief

Injunctions in this space tend to follow a recognisable pattern. Understanding the pattern is more useful than memorising outcomes.

The claim is specific and factual, so it can be shown to be false rather than argued about as opinion. The target is identifiable, even if unnamed. The message is negative about the target rather than merely positive about the advertiser. The campaign is running at scale, so the injury argument is easy to make. And the advertiser cannot produce a substantiation file that predates the campaign.

That last one decides more of these than anything else. A brand that walks in with an independent lab report, current market samples, a documented protocol and a dated approval is in a completely different position from a brand assembling evidence after the notice arrives.

The commercial reality also matters. Interim relief lands early. Media is booked, films are shot, packaging is printed. You lose the campaign long before anyone decides who was right. Plan for that timing risk rather than the eventual merits.

Making it a risk-weighted call

Do not ban comparative advertising internally. Price it.

Before approving one, answer five questions in writing. What exactly are we claiming, in one sentence. What is the evidence, who generated it and when. Is the attribute material to how consumers actually choose. Would a reasonable viewer identify a specific competitor. And what is our cost if this stops in week two.

If the evidence is independent, current and on-protocol, and the message is positive about you rather than negative about them, the risk is manageable and the upside is real. If the evidence is in-house, old or on a formulation you have not verified, do not run it. You are not buying reach. You are buying a dispute.

The brands that win at comparative advertising in India are not the boldest. They are the ones with the file.