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Journalism of Courage
A huge billboard with a Zomato advertisement on it has been generating a buzz on the Internet, especially Twitter. After a very upset socialite and entrepreneur Suhel Seth posted a picture of an advertisement by the restaurant-aggregator company with the abbreviations ‘MC, BC’ (both popular initialisms for Hindi cuss words) in bold text, people have taken to social media responding to the word-game the company has indulged in, on the poster. While some have lauded Zomato’s wit, others have chimed in with Seth’s disapproval at the implication of profanity on a mass medium.
Although, Zomato’s interpretation of MC is “mac n’ cheese” and BC is “butter chicken”. So the advertisement actually reads “Mac n’ cheese? Butter chicken? We’ve got it all. Order food online on Zomato.” An unimpressed Seth, however, tweeted the picture with the caption “Shame on you @ZomatoIN ! Absolutely shameful what you’ve attempted to do. Your investors should be sickened by your behaviour! @smritiirani : this is outrageous. @ascionline.”
Responding to Seth’s tweet, Pankaj Chaddah, the co-founder of Zomato, accepted that though they did not mean to hurt anyone’s sentiments, the company does realise why it can be offensive and apologised. He also said that they would take the ad down immediately. “Hey, while we didn’t mean to, we can see why it can be offensive to people, and we apologize for it. We will take this ad down with immediate effect. cc @AksharPathak @prao24,” he tweeted.
While Seth found the advertisement offensive and even tagged Smriti Irani, Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, and Textiles, in his tweet, people on Twitter are busy finding similar Zomato ads funny instead! And the others, well…how much time does it take to make a joke anyway! Check out some of the responses the advertisements have generated:
https://twitter.com/PedestrianPoet/status/935516529797373952
Here are other similarly witty posters people have spotted on the Internet.
