Blocked in UK, Complan & Horlicks feed on kids’ exam fears here

"Yeh history, geography badi bewafa, raat ko rato kal safaa."

"Yeh zaalim maths ke formulae, ghar mein yaad rahe exam mein bhule."

These are two ditties from a milk supplement advertisement currently playing on television. Companies marketing products pegged to season have now latched on to the one that holds households in grip around this time of the year: the exam season. What they are counting on is the nervousness and anxiety of intended consumers to sell their wares — based on dodgy "studies."

A Horlicks commercial on these lines, 'Taller, Stronger, Sharper', which has been running on Indian television for years, incidentally had to be withdrawn in the UK after the advertising standards authority objected.

After raising the bogey of history, geography and maths, an advertisement has a voice-over asking parents: "Do your children forget things they learn for their exams?" The reason, it says, "could be incomplete nutrition". To fill the gap, the advertisement adds, what is needed is "Complan memory". "Make your children drink it at least twice a day. It has five brain chargers that will charge your children's brain and improve their ability to retain what they learn."

"It is such a crafty move," says Bejon Mishra, former member of the Food Safety Authority of India and the founder of non-profit organisation Healthyyou. "You sell your product playing on your target audiences' insecurities and anxities and instill a sense of guilt."

Heinz India, the company that owns the Complan brand, did not respond to phone calls and email sent by The Indian Express.

However, Complan isn't the only one playing on the fear of exams. With a tagline 'Exams ka bhoot bhagao', a Horlicks ad features "ghosts" reminding children of exams. The voice in the background directs children to drink two cups of Horlicks every day to be "exam ready".

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