Amul Macho files a complaint against Lux Cozi for allegedly plagiarising its 'toing' advertisement from 2007

• Amul Macho’ blames Lux Cozi for copying its 'toing' ad.
• The Lux Cozi Ad featuring Varun Dhawan is currently being aired on various news channels and on Sony TV, appears to take more than just inspiration from the popular Amul Macho TOING Ad that was released in 2007.

J G Hosiery Pvt Ltd., makers of Macho Innerwear, alleges that Lux Cozi has copied its Amul Macho TOING Ad. The Lux Cozi Ad that is currently being aired on various news channels and on Sony TV, appears to have taken more than just inspiration from the popular Amul Macho TOING Ad that was released in 2007.
JG Hosiery has complained about the plagiarism and ASCI has accepted JG Hosiery’s complaint for further processing. As is well known, The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) is a self-regulatory body and ensures that all advertisements are honest, truthful, safe, within societal norms and not unfair to competition, on a self-regulatory basis.

The Lux Cozi Ad contravenes Chapter IV of the ASCI Code, Clause 4.3, which states that:

“Advertisements shall not be similar to any other advertiser’s earlier run advertisements in general layout, copy, slogans, visual presentations, music or sound effects, so as to suggest plagiarism."Navin Seksaria, CEO, JG Hosiery Pvt Ltd said, “We find it shocking that a worthy and esteemed competitor appears to want to ride on the creative success of a brand that’s a market leader in its category, by blatantly copying its popular Ad concept and executional elements. We hope good reason will prevail and the copied Ad will be withdrawn forthwith.”

The company finds the premise of the Ad by Lux Cozi to be identical to the Amul Macho TOING Ad and the storyline of the Lux Cozi Ad to be strikingly similar to their own creative asset. It’s a matter of deep concern to J G Hosiery that the woman in the Lux Cozi ad holds up the Lux Cozi underwear to show that her man wears Lux Cozi, implying that Varun Dhawan should stay away, in a similar manner to how it was held up by Sana Khan in the Amul Macho TOING ad. Amul Innerwear team takes the matter of their creative asset being copied very seriously, believing that the visual similarity of the two Ads cannot be a mere co-incidence. Both women in the two respective ads hold up the underwear to make a statement about the fact that, “My man wears this”. The similarity between the two ads does not end there but has so many common executional elements that JG Hosiery has felt compelled to call out the copy-cat work and point out, what appears to be an opportunistic brand building attempt by Lux Cozi.

Various executional elements of the Amul Macho Ad film can be seen in the Lux Cozi Ad film, some of which include:

• The way the woman holds up the underwear
• The colour of the underwear
• The shape of the underwear
• Specific expressions of the support cast when they see the underwear
• The music theme
• The setting being that of a small town and including washing/drying clothes