Is TD “aapna” bank? Appealing to the South Asian community

I am trying to purchase a flight ticket, but because I am an international student, my credit limit is just 1000$, and the ticket costs 1,150$. The fact that I have over 10,000$ in my account is not important, I can’t seem to buy this ticket. Since I have been a customer of CIBC‘s for four years, had my VISA card for more than two years, and spent a lot of money (all promptly repaid), I find it insulting that they refuse to raise the limit. So I am planning to go talk to them, and tell them that I will switch banks, if they cannot provide me with a higher credit limit.

To prepare, I thought I’d visit some other Canadian banks to check out their offers. Yesterday, at a party, I also met a girl who works for TD, and sang their praises, so I thought I’d see what kind of card deals they offer. However, when I went to the TD site, I became fascinated by something quite different.

At the bottom of the front page, there is a headline “Communities:”, and under that, links to “Chinese, Japanese and South Asian”. I am always very fascinated by how companies and public services in Canada try to accommodate, or attract, different ethnic and linguistic groups (I have written about that before here), so I clicked the three links.

The Chinese and Japanese links simply led to pages introducing TD’s services in Chinese (traditional) and Japanese. This made me very curious – what would be behind the South Asian link? After all, South Asia is an area famed for it’s linguistic diversity, with not only a large array of languages, but even a large array of scripts.

Turns out, the website is in “Hinglish” – English, interspersed with snippets of Hindi, written in the Latin script. So, the picture exclaims “Banking can be itna comfortable” (itna = so), and the following paragraph states:

TD Canada Trust is the sab se aasaan, convenient and secure way to handle your everyday banking, investment and credit needs. Ever since we first opened our doors in 1855, ek cheez kabhi nahi badli – our commitment to our customers, our employees and the community. At TD Canada Trust, our goal is to provide a positive banking experience for each and every customer.

(My highlights). Sab se aasaan – the most easy, ek cheez kabhi nahi badli – one thing has never changed (will never change?).

The page continues like this, with lot’s of information about their services, interspersed with short snippets of Hindi. We find out that “Banking with us is behtherien aur aasaan” (better and easy), they offer a list of “Sawaal-Jawaab” (questions and answers). And among their services, we see that “Telephone ya Internet se banking karne ki suvidha – that’s the covenience of EasyLine telephone banking and EasyWeb Internet banking with TD Canada Trust.” (the facility to bank with internet or telephone).

So what is the purpose of this? The words that are in Hindi are the most easy words, so it’s clearly not to make it easier to understand for someone who doesn’t speak English very well. Rather, it’s to make the bank seem friendly and welcoming to a “South Asian” community. I have a few questions:

• How natural does the text seem to a native Hindi speaker? Although I know that this is often done by the educated classes in India, who speak Hindi mixing in English, or English mixing in Hindi, this text doesn’t look quite natural. It seems a bit like someone took an English text, and added a few “ethnic” touches. Sort of like when the government is putting out a youth-oriented PSA (about STDs for example), and inserts some “dude”, “yo”. It doesn’t come across as authentic to the recipient.
• How is this perceived by non-Hindi speaking Indians and other South Asians? I have certainly seen ad campaigns with Hindi words in Latin script all over India, so it is quite possible that most Indians would be familiar with simple words like “aasaan” (simple), “bahut” (a lot), etc. But do they perceive this as imposing a Hindi-chauvinism, or does it make them nostalgic for “India”? How about groups from outside India? Pakistan (although they mainly speak Panjabi and Urdu, which are very similar to Hindi in this simplified, latinized form), Bangladesh (Bengali, again in the same language family, although a bit further away), Sri Lanka (Tamil and Sinhalese – all extremely different from Hindi)?

I have seen other ad campaigns in Toronto do this, mix in a few Hindi words to appeal to a certain community. But this is the first time I’ve seen it under the sub-heading “the South Asian community” – meaning it purports to represent all South Asians.

I know, if you addresses this to “the Nordic Community”, and wrote the whole text in Swedish, Norwegians might feel a bit miffed.

Is there even such a thing as a “South Asian community”? Certainly, in the region, there is a lot of enmity between some people from different groups, for example between India and Pakistan, and even within India between different religions, ethnic groups etc. Do these fade away when people end up in Toronto, and they find that there are more important commonalities than differences?

And how did the bank choose to address these three communities? (I am especially surprised by the Japanese addition – I can understand Chinese and South Asian, but I didn’t realize there were that many Japanese here). Is it purely based on demographic? (The most frequently spoken language in Toronto after English is Italian, but they don’t have their own section). Or based on which groups have the most problems with understanding English (clearly not the case with the South Asian example). Or the most wealthy/profitable customers?

Stian

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 7:28 pm and is filed under asia, canada, languages, toronto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.