ASCI or the Advertising Standards Council of India to send notice Virat Kohli. Kohli, the Indian Cricket Team' captain is India's most influential person on social media. Kohli is currently having 228 million fans across social media.
In fact, Virat Kohli is world's one of the highest paid athletes in the world. He ranks among the stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, LeBron James in the list. Perhaps, Kohli earns more than 1 crore rupees per pot on Instagram. Not only that Virat Kohli even has more followers on Instagram than ICC, the cricket board itself.
However, just few days earlier , Kohli had put an Instagram post applauding the LPU for their achievements. The post had congratulated 11 LPU students who are currently at Tokyo representing India. But, according to ASCI the post had some influencer guidelines.
Advertising Standards Council of India or the ASCI launched their new influencer guidelines recently. According to ASCI it felt more like a promotional campaign. Virat Kohli had tagged Lovely Professional University and also used same hashtags as well on Instagram.
"ASCI will take up the issue and write to the celebrity and the advertiser for their clarifications," said Manisha Kapoor, secretary-general ASCI via Mint.
Many fans and followers also feels that the post felt and looked like a paid promotion. Though there was no such sponsored tag on the post by Indian captain.
"It is critical so that it doesn't set a bad precedence. I've reached out to ASCI and they said they are taking it up suo moto on their own. All other influencers and the agencies are keenly looking forward to what ASCI will do in this case or how the penalty will be imposed if there's a penalty at all as it will set a new direction. This is the first time the rules are being implemented, we do not know how much power does ASCI has but it has to be vocal."
Karthik Srinivasan via Crictracker.
In this case Virat Kohli's biggest social media following is not helping him also. With a as big following like Kohli, he and his team needs to more careful with such posts from now on.