Surrogate advertising relates to advertising by duplicating the brand image of a product in order to promote another product of the same brand, the advertising for which is otherwise banned. In such advertisements, though the companies directly advertise a different product, they intend to advertise indirectly, a banned product such as liquor or tobacco. Consumers associate such advertisements with the corresponding banned product. The products are thus indirectly advertised. This, in turn, would influence the behavior of their audience. This paper focuses on analyzing the perceptions of the respondents on 'surrogate advertising', an unethical advertising practice, presently followed by corporates. It concludes that there exists a significant association between the aided recall of surrogate advertisements and the brands, with the age of the respondents. In general, the perceptions that govern the attitude of respondents towards surrogate advertisements are more on the negative. Irrespective of the positive perceptions, majority of the people perceive the phenomena of surrogate advertising as negative for the societyimmoral and unethical.

"Advertising is a paid, mass mediated attempt to persuade" (Oguinn, 2000). It is the non-personal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about products (goods and services) or ideas by identified sponsors through various media (Arens, 1996). According to Wells and Burnet, advertising is a paid non-personal communication from an identified sponsor using mass media to persuade or influence an audience (Wells and Burnet, 1998).

Many advertising related issues are left to the discretion of the advertiser. Decisions may be based on a variety of considerations, including the objective of the advertising campaign, the attitudes of the target audience, the philosophies of the agency and the advertiser, and legal precedents. Many decisions are based on ethical concerns (Wells and Burnet, 1998). Many of the ethical aspects of advertising border on and interact with both social and legal considerations of the advertising process. Ethics are the moral standards and principles against which behavior is judged. Much of what is judged as ethical or unethical comes down to personal judgment (Oguinn, 2000).

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