At around 8:55 pm MST on Monday, Calgarians were blasted with a commercial not in French or English, but in Punjabi.
The specific advertisement that aired on CBC Calgary featured English subtitles and followed an Indian woman living abroad who arranged medical care for her mother back in India. She gets access to funds by taking an overdraft against a fixed deposit with the bank, allowing her to pay for her mother’s knee replacement.
This advertisement was part of a campaign run by Axis Bank, whose main corporate headquarters is in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, called “Far Away But Never Apart”.
As advertised by Axis Bank on its website, the advertisements target “Non-Resident Indians” or Indian citizens living abroad for services for the Indian diaspora to send money “back home in India.”
Besides those living in Canada, the campaign also targets “Non-Resident Indians” in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Singapore through various platforms.
In May, another institution that receives taxpayer funding, the Calgary Police Service, defended its use of Punjabi signs to warn the city’s South Asian diaspora about potential extortion, signaling significant cultural changes.
The CBC has also run a Punjabi-focused Hockey Night in Canada show, which was cancelled this year after 18 years.
When asked how long the state broadcaster has been playing commercials in languages other than Canada’s two official languages and where else in Canada it has aired the advertisements, a spokesperson for the CBC said it had “limited control” over the advertisements.
”In an open programmatic digital buy, the publisher has no control over the ads or campaigns,” Chuck Thompson, the head of public affairs for the CBC, said. “A situation like this usually occurs because the advertiser did not apply a language filter, leaving us with limited control.”
Since only a minority of viewers comfortable with state-controlled media would likely encounter this, its reporting is surprising
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