The morning paper brought with it a flyer; one of those flyers slipped into the newspaper for a few hundred Rupees by the local newsagent. I think it is one of the brilliant marketing technique ever invented.
For a few hundred (thousand?) Rupees, one gets the opportunity to advertise his product or service in his (local) service area, which is his target audience. Don’t get me wrong. Chennai has its own neighbourhood weekly newspaper/magazines, in fact, dozens of them, talking about events and happenings in and around a particular neighbourhood (or even suburbs).
Inserting a flyer for a few hundred Rupees in the Saturday or Sunday daily is almost the same as advertising in those neighbourhood weeklies, which are free (Oops! should it be termed as ‘without cost’?) and delivered to every home in the area.
But the flyers have an advantage. A quick check on the rates charged by neighbourhood weeklies reveal it is approximately Rs. 250 to 400 in Classifieds, Rs. 400 to 800 in inner pages, Rs. 600 to 1000 in front or back pages and ear panels from Rs. 1500 for Black and White 4 x 3 cm standard ads. For colour it is anywhere between 25% to 50% extra, as per the weekly. These weeklies claim a distribution of around 30,000 to 40,000 per week. A Quarter page colour ad in these weeklies would cost around Rs, 8,000 to Rs. 10,000.
In comparison, 5000 copies of Quarter page single colour, two sided flyer can be printed for less than Rs. 2000 and for another Rs. 1000 can be inserted into the newspapers and reach the homes. Thus the flyer business is thriving and every home in Chennai is inundated with half a dozen every weekend. I love flyers, if they are printed only on one side - clipped together, the blank sides serve as excellent scrap pads. Truth be told, my mom loves them too - her monthly provision list is jotted down invariably on such flyers.
:-D
Thus it was this flyer extolling the virtues of a ‘coaching’ centre for students from class 8th to class 12th landed in my hands today. Thankfully it offered to coach students only in Mathematics and Sciences and not in English. I am not sure any parent would willingly send his/her ward to be coached in English there - based what is and how it is written on the flyer.
I am not quite sure whether ‘focus fundamentals’, ‘reinforce learning’, ‘exam facing’, and ‘making to solve’ are new concepts in teaching or just the marketing buzz words in vogue this year.
But I am positive that ‘Teaching Faculty’ and ‘Monthly Once meetings’ are superfluous.
:-P
Another thing I am quite sure about is that the parents would choose this (or any other) coaching centre for their ‘wards’ career, not for ‘your child career’. I mean I’ve heard of second career, part-time job and moonlighting, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a ‘child career’.
:-s
Whatever, I’d think twice before sending my ward to a coaching centre which promises ‘daily oral practice’
/ROFLMAO/
Anyway these are errors of grammar, which are quite common in India. As we all know, Indian English has its own idiosyncrasies (cousin-sister, et. al.) and way of speech (You are going home no; meaning ‘Are you going home?’) etc., which sound alien to others. Matter of fact, I’ve cousins who would berate me for this post, as they would find nothing wrong with the flyer.
Not that I am innocent of assaults on the English language. Some times when I read back my (some of my) posts, I find it difficult to believe that I actually wrote them - with such glaring grammatical bloopers.
BTP, even if we can understand the above grammatical errors, it is galling to see the way ‘Academy’ is spelled in there. At first I thought that it was gimmick to call attention and make the people actually read the flyer. For it was that ‘Acadmy’ without an ‘e’ which piqued my interest to read on through.
My next thought was that the coaching centre *is* named in actual as ‘Acadmy’ without an ‘e’, for branding purposes. A quick call to a friend nearby to the centre revealed it is not so.
Next the email id drew my attention which shows the correct spelling ‘Ex…….academy@gmail.com’ as does the nice emblem on top right, which also displays ‘academy’ with an ‘e’.
So it is neither a marketing gimmick, nor a branding idea, but a stupid, careless, failure to check the spelling. Seen in that light, the grammatical errors have to be accorded their own weight and we no other course but to conclude and hope that whoever their ‘teaching faculties’ are, they are better in Sciences and Mathematics than they are in English.
As for churning out Einsteins, well, do I dare say anything?
My Abashed half admonishes, ‘After running them down so much, let me say something nice. The emblem is cute, especially the part which shows a DNA strand, a plant and a molecule. Not so bad in its display of a spanner, a stethoscope and a monitor - which displays the famous ‘E=mc2’, which is where Einstein came into the picture.’
For a few hundred (thousand?) Rupees, one gets the opportunity to advertise his product or service in his (local) service area, which is his target audience. Don’t get me wrong. Chennai has its own neighbourhood weekly newspaper/magazines, in fact, dozens of them, talking about events and happenings in and around a particular neighbourhood (or even suburbs).
Inserting a flyer for a few hundred Rupees in the Saturday or Sunday daily is almost the same as advertising in those neighbourhood weeklies, which are free (Oops! should it be termed as ‘without cost’?) and delivered to every home in the area.
But the flyers have an advantage. A quick check on the rates charged by neighbourhood weeklies reveal it is approximately Rs. 250 to 400 in Classifieds, Rs. 400 to 800 in inner pages, Rs. 600 to 1000 in front or back pages and ear panels from Rs. 1500 for Black and White 4 x 3 cm standard ads. For colour it is anywhere between 25% to 50% extra, as per the weekly. These weeklies claim a distribution of around 30,000 to 40,000 per week. A Quarter page colour ad in these weeklies would cost around Rs, 8,000 to Rs. 10,000.
In comparison, 5000 copies of Quarter page single colour, two sided flyer can be printed for less than Rs. 2000 and for another Rs. 1000 can be inserted into the newspapers and reach the homes. Thus the flyer business is thriving and every home in Chennai is inundated with half a dozen every weekend. I love flyers, if they are printed only on one side - clipped together, the blank sides serve as excellent scrap pads. Truth be told, my mom loves them too - her monthly provision list is jotted down invariably on such flyers.
:-D
Thus it was this flyer extolling the virtues of a ‘coaching’ centre for students from class 8th to class 12th landed in my hands today. Thankfully it offered to coach students only in Mathematics and Sciences and not in English. I am not sure any parent would willingly send his/her ward to be coached in English there - based what is and how it is written on the flyer.
I am not quite sure whether ‘focus fundamentals’, ‘reinforce learning’, ‘exam facing’, and ‘making to solve’ are new concepts in teaching or just the marketing buzz words in vogue this year.
But I am positive that ‘Teaching Faculty’ and ‘Monthly Once meetings’ are superfluous.
:-P
Another thing I am quite sure about is that the parents would choose this (or any other) coaching centre for their ‘wards’ career, not for ‘your child career’. I mean I’ve heard of second career, part-time job and moonlighting, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a ‘child career’.
:-s
Whatever, I’d think twice before sending my ward to a coaching centre which promises ‘daily oral practice’
/ROFLMAO/
Anyway these are errors of grammar, which are quite common in India. As we all know, Indian English has its own idiosyncrasies (cousin-sister, et. al.) and way of speech (You are going home no; meaning ‘Are you going home?’) etc., which sound alien to others. Matter of fact, I’ve cousins who would berate me for this post, as they would find nothing wrong with the flyer.
Not that I am innocent of assaults on the English language. Some times when I read back my (some of my) posts, I find it difficult to believe that I actually wrote them - with such glaring grammatical bloopers.
BTP, even if we can understand the above grammatical errors, it is galling to see the way ‘Academy’ is spelled in there. At first I thought that it was gimmick to call attention and make the people actually read the flyer. For it was that ‘Acadmy’ without an ‘e’ which piqued my interest to read on through.
My next thought was that the coaching centre *is* named in actual as ‘Acadmy’ without an ‘e’, for branding purposes. A quick call to a friend nearby to the centre revealed it is not so.
Next the email id drew my attention which shows the correct spelling ‘Ex…….academy@gmail.com’ as does the nice emblem on top right, which also displays ‘academy’ with an ‘e’.
So it is neither a marketing gimmick, nor a branding idea, but a stupid, careless, failure to check the spelling. Seen in that light, the grammatical errors have to be accorded their own weight and we no other course but to conclude and hope that whoever their ‘teaching faculties’ are, they are better in Sciences and Mathematics than they are in English.
As for churning out Einsteins, well, do I dare say anything?
My Abashed half admonishes, ‘After running them down so much, let me say something nice. The emblem is cute, especially the part which shows a DNA strand, a plant and a molecule. Not so bad in its display of a spanner, a stethoscope and a monitor - which displays the famous ‘E=mc2’, which is where Einstein came into the picture.’
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