It seems to be the season for misguided promotional offers from big brands. Recently Flipkart put a metaphorical foot into its own mouth by offering discounts on kitchen products to celebrate Women’s Day. And now we have Ola scaring people by sending out messages telling them there are 8 missed calls from their mother.
If there are 8 missed calls from anyone, that is going to cause a scare and if that someone is mom, that is going to make us positively anxious. And yet that’s the route Ola decided to take for this promotion about a 40% discount on something or other.
Many people shared screenshots of the notification from Ola about the 40% discount promotion for Ola Dash. Most people thought it was the sort of clickbait that reputed brands should avoid.
This is also in poor taste considering that there could be people who have sick mothers at home or who may recently have lost their mothers.
It is unethical in the way that it almost forces people to click /tap on the notification almost instinctively. We see a notification like this and feel how careless of me; how could I have missed 8 calls!
Something like this intuitively makes us feel a horrid sort of anxiety mixed up with guilt.
Who thought this was a good idea? Or a funny idea?
Even if one discounts the whole anxiety angle, this doesn’t make a lot of sense as a promo – which person is going to call 8 times to tell someone about some random discount?
Even if someone’s mother is perfectly hale and hearty, they are still going to feel anxious about 8 missed calls from a mother: is she going to be angry, disappointed, sad, crying… wanting us to pick up paneer?
Ola’s promo which most see as tasteless and unethical was also on the front page of Reddit reported netizens.
Another Twitter user reported how Ola tries to promote their services like this when people cancel a cab – by appealing to their insecurities or sense of loneliness as well.
This notification from Ola not only caught the eye of a lot of people, it also started a lot of online discussions on Twitter, Reddit and so on. In showbiz they say all publicity is good publicity – perhaps the same is true in the world of marketing as well?
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