Lux Cozi copies Amul Macho’s famous TOING Ad!

J G Hosiery Pvt Ltd., makers of Macho Innerwear, have brought to the attention of the Industry that Lux Cozi has blatantly 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 take more than just inspiration from the popular Amul Macho TOING Ad that was released in 2007.  The Amul Macho Ad when first released had become extremely popular and had built the Brand Equity of Amul Macho brand. The Ad can be seen even now on YouTube as one of the most popular ads of all time. 

The Amul Macho Ad, when it was first released, successfully communicated that Amul has something which sets it apart from other brands in the category, with the 'Yeh toh bada TOING hai' Ad film. 

JG Hosiery has complained about the blatant 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”. 

Says Mr. Navin Seksaria, CEO, JG Hosiery Pvt Ltd, “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 We hope good reason will prevail and the copied Ad will be withdrawn forthwith.”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 

JG Hosiery believes that the Lux Cozi Ad unfairly tries to take advantage of the Brand Equity, reputation and goodwill generated by the Amul Macho TOING Ad, by copying both, the concept and executional elements of the brand’s popular Ad film and must therefore be restrained from being aired.