Sebi?s insistence on the standard mutual fund warning being read at normal speeds will reduce the attention people pay to the warning and therefore to mutual fund ads. The reason is simple: the high-speed warnings (as well as the way the speed has increased over the last few months) were genuinely attention-getting. At a friends’ house where the TV is always muted during ads, his son insists on switching on the sound during mutual fund ads because he finds those disembodied alien voices spouting gobbledygook so funny.
The child has actually started recognising the names of mutual fund companies because he loves listening to the warnings. I’m sure when he grows up he’ll invest only in those fund companies whose warnings were the fastest. I think the logical next step would have been to do the entire ad at high speed. Who knows, had Sebi not spoiled the fun, this could have been the beginning of a trend. One day, all ads of all products would have been at high speed.
Anyhow, now that Sebi has stepped in, the warnings will be read in a normal voice and so it will not be such fun to listen to them. People will ignore them just like every other warning whether it’s booze bottles reminding you that consumption of liquor is injurious to health or car rear-view mirrors pointing out that objects in the mirror are actually behind you. Or something like that. And of course insurance ads saying that ‘insurance is the subject matter of solicitation’.
Do you know what that means? I wonder what percentage of the human race does? Warnings are meaningless but I seriously think that mutual funds carry an unfair share of warnings. Do insurance ads selling Ulips tell you that Ulips are subject to market risks? Do bank ads tell you that deposits above Rs 1 lakh are not guaranteed? Do you see anything approaching a warning on wealth management ads? Don’t these services have risks? I’m not sure why mutual funds are being singled out.
Perhaps the fault lies with ad agencies who thought they were being smart by speeding up the warnings. All they succeeded in doing was to draw attention. Warnings are routinely ignored.
For example, at the entrance of every government office there’s the warning ‘Satyamev Jayate’. How many of those working inside do you think pay any attention to it?
The author is CEO, Value Research
