AU Small Finance Bank’s new 50-second commercial featuring Aamir Khan and Kiara Advani opened floodgates to social media trolling as netizens found it to be way out of line for traditional banking company ads to depict artists in a ‘progressive’ way.
It was eventually removed by the company from all social media handles as #BoycottAUBank and #BoycottAamirKhan began trending on Twitter.
The ad, now retracted, started by showing the newly-wed couple Khan and Advani seated in the back seat of a car which is moving towards Advani’s home in the film since Khan decided to become a stay-at-home son-in-law since the female protagonist’s father is specially-abled.
The ad ran on a very progressive communication line of questioning, as to why one should stick to the age-old societal norms and expectations, followed by Khan questioning the practices prevalent in the banking industry so that one can get the best services and it culminated with the name of the campaign ‘Badlav Humse Hai’.
It is also to be noted here that both Khan and Advani are the brand ambassadors of AU Small Finance Bank.
Post the airing of the new ad film, AU Bank was strongly criticized by some for showcasing a progressive move that doesn’t concern banking as a category, post which the banking company finally decided to take the ad down.
Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, a filmmaker and author, took to Twitter to express his opinion on the new ad and questioned, “Since when Banks have become responsible for changing social and religious traditions?”
Furthermore, he also highlighted that in his opinion, a better approach for AU Bank would have been to do activism by making a change in the corrupt banking system.
Commenting on Agnihotri’s tweet, Twitteratis began to bash Khan as well as Sanjay Agarwal for wanting to see a ‘Badlav’ in the ‘Hindu culture’ per se and urged fellow netizens to boycott the banking company and Khan.
Some of the netizens also slammed Agnihotri for tweeting such content just to satisfy his personal grudge against Khan and the entire Muslim community and said that if he wanted to highlight the corruption issue pertinent to the banking companies, he would’ve easily done so without tweeting about the ad.
However, there was a slew of Twitteratis who urged AU bank to take down the ad from all social media handles and issue an apology for disrespecting the culture.
However, post the takedown, some netizens also expressed that they felt disappointed with AU Bank for succumbing to social media trolling due to the alleged religious discord.
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