When the visual is the villain

This is an ad for a fund that promises to make your money work harder. The bloke's walking blind into disaster with a pile of boxes!

If this is how one made money work harder, I'd rather my money remained fast asleep.

Finally, someone has had the guts to say it

In the of rush to expand customer base, it is now commonplace to offer "promotional offers" to new customers, while existing customers continue to languish, shackled by old contracts. I have always had an issue with this and have blogged out it earlier [(Customer) Happiness is a state of being, Marcom Wishlist for 2010].

According to a report in the DNA , Mr R R Nair, Chairman, LIC Housing Finance Limited, had this to say in reaction to the news of many banks withdrawing their teaser-rate home loan offers:

"Any discount of more than 50 basis points (0.5%) on a promotional basis is not good. This means your existing customers are paying much more than the new customers. You are creating a different class of customers."

Whether teaser home-loan products are harmful is an issue best left to finance experts, but that a corporate leader has agreed that it is wrong to shortchange existing customers in the frenzy to get new customers, is welcome news, specially when he belongs to a Industry that is notorious for promoting this practice.

All is not lost.

Wanted: More Social Heads

While we have been obsessing over tweets from Shashi Tharoor and Priyanka Chopra, a silent revolution has been brewing in the Indian corporate world.

Business leaders are realising that there're no better ambassadors of their brand than them, and the age of putting up walls around you is virtually over.

Anand Mahindra, the Vice Chairman & MD of the Mahindra Group, has been quietly setting an example on Twitter. While many new age companies and their CEOs have embraced Twitter, most traditional behemoths shy away from it, ostensibly for fear of backlash especially from irate customers, or because they are clueless about it.

In this scenario, Mr Mahindra's Twitter page (@anandmahindra) is a welcome breath of fresh air. He shares interesting tidbits, and most importantly, responds to queries and provides solutions.

Here are some examples of his Twitter conversations: