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b4-i-4get: Trust the Bank but not its Banker?

How can a PR campaign help the bank to wash its hands of the scam, analyzes Nataranjan Bohidar.

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b4-i-4get: Trust the Bank but not its Banker?

b4-i-4get: Trust the Bank but not its Banker?

How can a PR campaign help the bank to wash its hands of the scam, analyzes Nataranjan Bohidar.

By Nataranjan Bohidar

publive-imageNothing gives agency and client a more pronounced hard on as, what is loosely called, a Corporate Campaign! For the agency it is money for jam. For client it is jam for money. A sweet trickly emotional feeling oozes forth from seeing your very own feel good ad and it makes you, well, feel good, in a flavor of your choice. Even more pleasing is that treacle-like it simply slips through your fingers…. you can't catch it even if you closed your fists around it…there is no measurement possible…there are no sales objectives hard on its heels….its pure unadulterated closeted pleasure…in the open!

That you actually paid for it through your nose and other accounting orifices – because nobody really budgets for a self congratulatory media splurge such as this -  becomes a secondary matter, inconsequential, because the final 'product' looks so much like a third party testimonial. After all, did you not convince your agency – the third party, so to say - most wholesomely that you are really actually indeed as good as you look in the ads? Did they not all nod in unison at your claims of total dedication to customer and king- both being one and the same quantity, for you? Did they not rush about presenting 7 different versions of your goodness to you …5 that you rejected and 2 that you bent them backwards to rework? Did you not feel like king when they did that, when actually you were customer, their customer - both being one and the same quantity, for them?

Then arrived the photosonic moment of success…amplifying the smile on three faces…yours, your agency's and the cute looking model/s' in the ad! How you wished there was a specialist 2700 Phantom camera that captured the three smiles all at once at the speed of 4000 frames/sec. that u-could-u-tube-off to your bosses to grab that long pending promotion that u-got-fobbed-off last year because some idiot employee in some rural branch of yours, in a place called Some-gaon – Goongaon, was it? - was caught with his hands mysteriously in his customer's pants, or pockets , if you like– who by some strange coincidence were  your very own bank's customers , too -  in a INR 4 billion scam that simply blew the pants off your banking integrity around the world.

But you were smart…else how could you have retained that top of the pyramid spot that you want to better now? Without losing head but giving it really hard, you simply ordered a PR campaign that more or less, mota mota, as they say, or net net, read ''Trust the Bank but not the Banker''. It simply blew the minds of everybody, including your customers, by the sheer genius of it! Nobody realized that you are a Banker, too, because everyone understood, their frowns turning into totally satisfied photosonically enlarged smiles, that the scam was perpetrated ostensibly by a citiemployee in a neighborhood friendly Citibranch whom CITIBANK has dutifully reported to the local police. In fact, none other but CITIBANK was the first to discover this fraud and forgery committed in its very own Citibranch by its very own citiemployee. What a citimoment of success! Now, don't mark the words, that may or may not make sense, but mark the capitalisation of the alphabets...in this brilliant, some might say bizarre, co-relation between CITIBANK, Citibranch and citiemployee.

CITIBANK is not the perpetrator of this fraud, you argued in medium after medium. CITIBANK is the overarching entity that reported the crime committed by someone else, a Leeds graduate in the arts, who by some quirk of fate - such as the one that pushes up onion prices in this country and makes us cry- happened to be a citiemployee working in this Citibranch for 7 years with a job description that has nothing whatsoever to do with  SEBI document forgeries &  multi billion INR deceptions. In fact, the most aggrieved party in this sordid affair is CITIBANK itself! Look how this spineless citirecruit, with a 7 year itch (his wife, another citiemployee, doesn't even acknowledge him) has dragged the good name of CITIBANK manifested in a dominant blue vignette through demeaning mud brown vignettes, when all CITIBANK has done is given this feckless guy an easy job with endless spare time to engineer single handedly a 4 billion INR scam in 14 months flat. And this even as CITIBANK has been furiously advertising that, “ In India, since 1902…with our exceptionally talented and committed employees…Citi never sleeps” .That the citifraudster is “exceptionally talented” is easy to see…look at the manner he has used his and numerous citiaccounts, too, liberally sprinkled throughout CITIBANK, to mastermind the citiscam without being detected. Thereby making him both citiemployee and citicustomer and rattling his legendary citicommitment from one to the other!

Well, with the margins so blurred here, such as between a real citiaccount statement and a citifake, you urged your dear citicustomers for their own sanity's sake, to keep up that distinction, at their end, which, you told them, they must believe is a privilege …that is, to do a citiemployees job while being a citicustomer! (We told you, didn't we, that we invest a great deal in strengthening how our customers feel and think about – and also be like – us! Well, here's your opportunity to be like us…just keep your own account…only pay us the service fee, that'll do nicely, thank you!). And never forget to take every apparent cititeller, citistatement, citigoon, citiofficer, citiclerk to the citibank of origin & check & re-check that these are genuinely CITIBANK and not some imitation citibank.

And if you were to, dear citicustomer, visit CITIBANK next  - oops, but how would that be possible... after all, who knows if that solid looking Citibranch, that serious looking Citibanker, that smiling Citireceptionist, that obsequious  Citiemployee, that swaggering Citirelationshipmanager, that plain looking Citidocument, that currency spewing Citiatm, that neon flashing Citisignage furiously beckoning you to step in to my parlor is not a fake, forgery or fraud that CITIBANK in all honesty & its legendary integrity will at some time in the future turn in to the police crying ''fraud'' , leaving you dear citicustomer in the lurch to go fetch your lost citimonies all by yourself? So, dear citicustomer, why visit CITIBANK at all…in these virtual times? Simply allow us to touch you for your money and leave us to create the best outcomes for you and industry defying incomes for us. After all, doesn't the real joy of a touch lie in one powered by Citi… so, let us touch you… give us the touch mandate, while you can treat us like untouchables, ok, dear citicustomer?

Now, should that have been CITICUSTOMER in the suspicion that there may be two sets of them - one in all lower case to scam from and the other in all upper case to benefit from the scam - such is the deep schism, the extreme schizophrenia in our corporate sector today, that Publicis-Ambience can barely understand …let alone do something about…but create corporate campaigns, nevertheless!

So, what are the chances the agency will wake up one morning to be told that the citibank that operated in India, for whom it twirled the camera and tweaked the copy and twittered the good word wasn't CITIBANK AT ALL AND CITIBANK HAS IN FACT REPORTED THIS FRAUD TO THE AUTHORITIES ABOUT A CERTAIN citibank OPERATING ILLEGALLY IN THE NAME OF THE REAL CITIBANK!

And the corporate campaigning camera will then swing the remaining 900 to catch the grin or snicker or smirk or guffaw or chuckle or chortle or leer or sneer or simper or beam or frown or scowl of consternation on a nation's face bordering on deep fear!

Ref: Effectiveness of Corporate Campaigns, Sponsorships , Advtg & PR – Questions based on unpublished letter to editor of leading financial newspaper for readers of BestMediaInfo.com to answer / respond to :

>Does the CITIBANK logo on the backdrop/ groundsinge/association with IPL lull investigation into the bank's DLF II, Gurgaon Branch employee's affairs?

> Can CITINGS have a soporific effect on ET editorials!

> Do “brand purpose” commercials mitigate news such as 'Anatomy of a Scam', Mint, Jan 10, 2011

> Is lifestyle advertising preferable to cautious edit speculation that warn customers, as contained in  ''Fraud at CITI'', column 5 para 4 : ''....fraud in electronic fund transfers to....touted .....//They (Citibank HNWI customers) also didn't question the obvious discrepancy that would have been visible between the original Citibank monthly statement of accounts that they would have received directly from the bank and the fake Excel sheet statements that Puri was sending them. //......While police authorities and regulators are getting to the bottom of the fraud, there is no.....'' Of course there would have been a visible discrepancy between the two, dear Ed, should there have been a visible bank statement in the first place! Has Tamal checked if any monthly bank statement was received by the duped customers at all to compare with their fake Excels, if they ever received that, either?

>Can fake theatrical storytelling in commercials replace real life , everyday , painful moments like this : “It is reliably learnt that 6 years ago Citilawyers- a very powerful bunch - were commandeered apparently to defend in court the sending of Citigoons to rough up a legitimate car owner, snatch the keys and drive away the vehicle in the name of  'repossession' , this AFTER CITI (bank , not employees) HAD RECEIVED FULL REPAYMENT OF LOAN FOR CAR (CITI HAD ALREADY CASHED 92% OF REPAYMENT AND 8% WAS IN ITS HANDS IN THE FORM OF ADVANCE UNDATED CHEQUES). And yet, as someone close to the matter reports, Citi/employees took the vehicle away...brazenly sold it in the secondary market without ownership or insurance papers (more forgery?) and appropriated the proceeds (more scammery ). And made a further demand for re-payment of about 3,000/- odd INR while securely holding 65,000/- INR in advance-issued undated cheques!

> Are CITIBANK employees really as spectacular as shown in the ads or just as ordinary and fallible as others in the banking industry in India : “All this could have been avoided, ostensibly, if Citiemployees  had carried out their legally binding paper work, that is, sent statement of accounts for reconciliation which in a cussed sort of way Citiofficials refused to provide despite it being mandatory to furnish per loan agreement! The matter apparently is in the court where papers filed show how Citiexecutives have tampered with the bank statement post alleged illegal seizure of car...aided by some brilliant legal minds – the powerful bunch - in India!”

> Can advertising , corporate or brand , make  a value distinction between organization and employee – that the company is clean even when its employees are dirty  : “That forgery and tampering with documents is not unknown to Citiofficials - though it may be totally alien as a concept to Citibank -is proven by the fact that Citiofficials took advance cheques for loan repayment , it is reliably learnt,  and insisted no date be put on them, which is just a dressed window on Citiofficials' apparent intentions to forge the cheques at a future date, say experts close to the case. This Citiofficials took after getting a separate agreement signed for ECS which was never renewed even once in five years because apparently  'it is such a hassle' , as one Citiofficial , at the very top of the bank, put it...underscoring the fact that lethargic account keeping is part of the top down culture among Citiemployees. Now, this ECS sought to override the need for loan repayment by post-dated cheques as envisaged in the original agreement. So, why take undated cheques in advance, if not with the intention to forge dates on them subsequently or con-currently with ECS? Now, whose foolish idea could this be? Certainly not Citibank's, but a scam oriented Citiemployee, without doubt!” A recent article in ET states that Stanchart has experienced a scam similar to the one Citi experienced. The rumor is that the employee who caused the  scam at Citi was an ex-employee of Stanchart….banking scams appear to be continuous, consistent , coherent and contagious!

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publive-imageNataranjan Bohidar is a Sr. Management professional with 35 years of positioning experience. He held key integrated marketing and communications positions with reputed companies like NESTLE India, Bennett, Coleman & Company and leading American collaborations in the automotive industry.

Views Expressed here are personal. HE MEANS NO OFFENCE TO INDIVIDUAL OR COMPANY, ONLY TO SYSTEMS & PROCESSES OUT OF WHACK! Mail natbohi@in.com for BACK perspectives & more. BACK = (B)rand, (A)dvertising, (C)ommunication, (K)angaroo. Or just follow this column exclusive to BestMediaInfo.com.

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