ASCI disclosure for brands: who labels what, and who checks
Playbooks6 min read
In India, a creator post that is paid for needs a clear label, and a brand that commissions the post should treat the label as its own concern, not only the creator’s. The Advertising Standards Council of India publishes the guidelines. This post is a working outline of how a brand team handles them — who labels what, where, and who checks — and not a substitute for the guidelines themselves.
Which posts need a label
The test is whether there is a material connection between the creator and the brand: a payment, a free product, a commission, a trip, an agreement to post, or any other benefit that a viewer would want to know about. If the answer is yes, the post is advertising for this purpose, and it is labelled. That holds whether the creator was paid in money or in goods, and whether or not the post says anything negative.
It also holds when the creator says they would have posted anyway. The label is for the viewer, not for the creator’s conscience. Gifted products, affiliate links and ambassadorships all sit on the labelled side of the line, and a brand that is unsure should treat the post as one that needs it.
Where the label goes, format by format
A label that a viewer cannot find is a label that was not applied. The principle is simple: it must be placed where a viewer meets it before they have decided whether to keep watching, and in a form they can read at the speed the format is consumed.
On a reel or a short, that means on the video itself, early and readable, and in the first lines of the caption, not at the end of a block of hashtags. On a story, it sits on the frame, for long enough to be read. On a long video, it is said aloud and shown near the start, and repeated in the description. On a static post, it leads the caption. Where a platform offers its own paid-partnership label, use it, and keep a plain-language label in the content as well.
The exact wording and placement the guidelines expect can change. Read the current text, and brief the creator against it, so the instruction is the creator’s to follow and not yours to chase.
Who checks before it goes live
Someone has to. On a managed campaign that is the agency’s operator, who reads each draft for the label before the brand approves it. On a campaign without an agency, it is a named person on the brand side. The check is a line in the approval round, with the same weight as the product claim: the draft is not approved until the label is seen.
Check again after posting. A caption can be edited, a label can be cropped by the platform’s own interface, and a post can be re-shared with the disclosure removed. A short review in the first day catches the ones that went wrong, while fixing them is cheap. At vexo.club every paid post carries its disclosure and the post is checked for it before it is signed off.
What goes in the brief and the contract
In the brief: that the post is paid and must be labelled, where the label should sit on each format, and that the creator is not to remove or hide it after posting. In the contract: the creator’s obligation to disclose, the brand’s right to see a draft for that purpose, what happens if a post is found to be unlabelled, and who is responsible for correcting it and by when.
Add a clause on reposts. If the brand reposts the creator’s content on its own handles, the brand’s own post is advertising from the brand, and it needs to read as such. And include the takedown route: when a label has to be fixed, the creator or the brand can edit or remove the post within an agreed time, without a negotiation. The briefing format is in /blog/briefing-a-creator, and brands in categories with heavy claims will find the category notes on /influencer-marketing-for-fmcg-brands.
Read the current text
Everything above is the desk’s working practice, not the guidelines and not legal advice. The guidelines are ASCI’s own document, and they are revised; the version that applies is the one in force on the day the post goes live. Read it on ASCI’s website, give it to every creator you brief, and take advice from counsel on anything that touches a regulated category or a dispute.
The resource at /resources, ASCI disclosure end to end, walks through the same ground for creators. The most useful habit is the dull one: read the current text each time a campaign starts, not each time a complaint arrives.
