Buyer beware, advertisers are out to get you!

Advertising is often out of touch with reality. Of course this is partially intrinsic to the profession. After all, it is the job of the 'Dream merchants' to suggest to prospects that Brand X tablets will give them Bipasha Basu's figure or that a pair of shoes is the road to success.

Indeed, the prospect shares this suspension of disbelief, as he imagines how a particular deo-spray or shirts from a certain store will turn women into helpless victims of passion who will hurl themselves at him.
In normal times one takes these exaggerations as acceptable, but recent events in the financial arena – when words like 'tsunami' and 'meltdown' have become commonplace - compel us to take another look at this phenomenon of exaggeration. And see that financial services make advertising professionals look like amateurs in the game of 'hyper-reality'!

Caveat emptor v/s relentless urging
It is a clichй that customers must be watchful and take well-considered, rational decisions. We know that humans are not rational in the face of the relentless combined actions of marketers and media. What else can explain how anorexic, emaciated women with dissipated expressions are the definition of 'beauty'!

Similarly, is rationality at work when people acquire dozens of credit cards or go to foolhardy lengths like taking loans, to play the stock market?

But then people are being urged not to be reasonable.

This doesn't cause too much harm, if it's only a DTH service saying thoda aur wish karo, but it takes on a different dimension when a financial service urges you to continually seek more and indeed that it is not a worthwhile life if one doesn't follow the principle of karo zyaada ka iraada.

The fine print
Mutual Funds (MF) and IPOs not only fan the flame of greed, they turn disclosure into a farce. The unreadable manner in which caveats at the end of MF or IPO ads are presented show clearly there is no intention of following the spirit of the law.

And of course there's the escape clause in the fine print saying: 'Past performance is no assurance of future performance' (never mind that the bold headline proclaims the advertiser's track record!)

The reality shows up when you discover that a brand that promised you Kal par control, had no control over its own NAV tanking.

Unfortunate timing
For some brands though, it's just unfortunate timing.

For instance, it's strange to see TV commercials and print ads from a new player in the financial services area, saying "Make it happen", when there are enough news items in national and international media informing you that what this company has been forced to 'make happen' is a massive bailout, and the part-sale of ownership to the Government.

Meanwhile, intense newscasters gaze out penetratingly from TV screens, discussing financial markets in incomprehensible terms, making it necessary to help the layman understand the meaning of the verbal confetti being tossed around.

So here are some frequently used terms and what they really mean.

Going forward: A meaningless term, used to suggest that they also considered the options of going sideways, backwards or off at a tangent but chose, after deep thought, to 'go forward'.

Market sentiment: The actual reason why share prices move. To be used only when the prices drop. The term to use when the prices are going up is "strong fundamentals".

Highly leveraged: Fancy term for "took on commitments way beyond what we had any hope of fulfilling, but we thought there were even more greedy people around, which would allow us to get away with it"

Profits under pressure: We are getting whipped, and we will not make the obscene profits we (and breathless reporters) thought we'd continue to make forever.

Consumer confidence is low: People don't seem to be spending like drunken sailors.

Integration/Uncoupled from the world economy: To be used on the day the Indian share prices DO or do NOT mirror the fall in international stockmarkets respectively.

Risk management: An oxymoron

And now, may I request you to observe two minutes of silence for all the stock options that died recently?

(Anand Halve is co-founder, Chlorophyll.)