HSBC has always been agressive with its advertising. But recently their opportunistic advertising has been getting up my wick. Take this ad here:

I photographed the above picture on a billboard near the Shakura market opposite the Sheraton (pls excuse the telegraph wires). This is a clearcut and shameless appropriation of a national symbol for commercial purposes. But it didn’t end there. At the Ekushey Book fair, HSBC apparently organised a quiz “with a view to diseminating knowledge on the glory of ‘Amar Ekushey’ among the new generation.” See HERE. ( Yes our journo fraternity love re-printing press releases without any critical input). And of course if you got things right, you would get one of their pens and one of their Amar Ekushey posters.

But that is not all, I kept encountering HSBC posters with the words “Celebrating One Hundred Years In Bangladesh.” Correct - that is the exact wording. That is what the posters said. Now my calculator is a cheap casio one but it functions acceptably, and tells me, even after repeated inputs, that Bangladesh is not that old if I subtract 1971 from 2006. Was my history wrong? Nope. True the All-India Muslim League was born in 1906 and so was the novelist R K Narayan but not Bangladesh. So what could it be about? Well according to Steve Banner, the CEO of HSBC, it was to “promote local culture and heritage as well as diversity.” And it was to celebrate the last one hundred years of bangla music. Bangla music is older but the last 100 years is a good number of years to celebrate, isn’t it? A century is a nice round figure after all. And of course the hugely long but totally false association implied in the ad between Bangladesh and HSBC can’t do business any harm - can it? So it dawned on thick old me that the title of the ad has no particular reference point in 1906 but the resonance of 100 years was too good to miss for the ad men. And that got up my wick. If you can be bothered to read the Daily Star about the event HSBC organised, do note again the sycophantic and uncritical journalist’s comment at the end. One hopes that the artistic community are, or will become, a bit more discerning about patronage than this journo Karim Waheed would like.

So what is behind it - I suspect all the above is fluff around what HSBC might be upto. Fluff to win the consumers’ hearts and minds. And they will need to. According to The HSBC Watch HSBC is rolling out its dodgy and high cost Household finance in Asia. ( In 2003 HSBC bought disgraced predatory lender Household International and apparently it has not dropped the infamous business model). I also understand this year HSBC are going into Islamic Banking in Bangladesh. I look forward to seeing their shariah compliant ads.