Countless Monies Spent On Mindless Ads

Even a demented person would be shocked at the number of bloopers that keep appearing on our dailies and magazines. However, what's really appalling is that such bakwaas stuff is not coming from some uninitiated, aaltu-faaltu Ajmalkhan Road manufacturer, who doesn't give a fig about who's reading his ad. But from some of the really big, better known, and if I may add, prestigious business houses who have many marketing wizkids.

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

Sample the ad(?) alongside from HSBC Bank. Apparently, it's meant for the aam aadmi in Tamil Nadu(that's perhaps why the visual is so dumb and artificial). And since the ad has appeared in a Tamil newspaper, we felt it hit the TA bang on - which is your small time traders and entrepreneurs who are not smart enough to read English.

But wait! Hey, the headline is in English! We are sure it would have left every Tamil guy wondering what the Bank was trying to say in its headline (fortunately, the body text is in Tamil). And as far as those smart Tamils who can read English, well, they anyway can't make head or tail out of it. Poor Tamils. Someone should tell them that they have to learn to read Hindi written in English if they ever dreamt of dealing with this bank. (What was horrific, the same line "Kadam Kadam Badhaye Ja" was seen written in Tamil (not translated) in many of the bus shelters across Chennai. Talk of "local understanding" by the "World's Local Bank"!