What is your Point of View?

There is a small café in Mongkok, which I mentioned before, whose owner seems to prefer NewsWeek as a regular source of global news. While waiting for a friend, I was flipping through the current issue at the café, and there I found an inspiring article right next to the letters to the editors. The article title was bright red in colour and typeset in a certain Serif font, like this:

My Point of View

The article was presumably written by a Taiwanese woman about her grandson Jason. The American kid had been studying in London. He did not want to work as a doctor like his father did, and have come to Taiwan to "see the world". At first the young man was not welcomed in the neighbourhood because he dressed like a degenerate. However, when later a fire broke out, he was the first to run into the scene and saved a girl with his first-aid skills.

Why, you may ask, is such an article appearing beside the "letters" section? It was not until the last paragraph when I noticed an equally bright red box in the bottom. The box had a triangular indentation on one side, like the one you can see below:

The article is in fact one of an advertisement series placed by HSBC, "the world's local bank".

This advertisement is interesting in a number of ways.

Position, layout

"Advertising" was printed legibly on the top right corner: The placement clearly indicated its nature but it was styled in such a way that the reader simply would not look at the grey letters. The article was written just like any other article appearing in a news magazine. It was only in the last paragraph, when fire insurance was mentioned, that one realizes it was about the evil cornerstone of modern empires, the finance industry.

Content

While no references were made directly to the bank, the "globally local" concept was blended carefully throughout the article. The relationship between traditional Chinese families and American born Chinese educated in Britain is a perfect example of reconciliation of different cultures.

Insurance agents like to sell by fear. They like to tell you how easy it is to get Cancer; how tragic it can be if you are critically ill and unable to support your family; how helpless you will be when you are old without huge personal savings. This article did not scare you. It only suggested such possiblities indirectly. It is so real yet so distant. Afterall it is only a side character in a fictional story from a neighbouring country.

It also converted liabilities into dreams. How nice it will be if I could have a home so I can show my friends my personal collection! HSBC financed my home and made my dream come true. No mentioning of interest rates and repayment periods. It just worked. This was the placement in the previous week's issue.


It is no wonder why HSBC is one of the worlds top banks, and JWT one of the world's top advertising agencies.