If you have a business and are looking for content writing services, you may want to consider Muneek Shah’s company in Gujarat. According to its website, the company “has assembled a team of the best writers from around the India.” If that isn’t impressive enough, here’s the sales pitch on the home page of the website:
Professional copywriting service is the way to feel customers confident about their business and switching it to the higher side by the words. So those who really want to stand out different and innovative among all others choose us or effective and strong web presence.
When a potential customer gone through your writing, you have just a seconds to prove you’re self by catching their attention. Though the literature has same fonts, color and style, it should be eye catchy. They should be attracted and convinced them to stay to read what you have to say. Along with the best service marketing tool is essential to target the perfect mass and capture the business.
Choosing a professional copywriting service can really make all the difference on the business world. It takes a special kind of skill and experience to create a winning writing, whether it is an online presence, articles, marketing campaign, or any other type of collateral. In fact, good copywriting is critical to the success of your business.
Here at our team, that is what we do. Our professional writers dedicated to providing you authenticated, informative and heart winning copies that will attract the potential customers. They just hypnotized the customers in favor of yours by the ornamental words. [Link]
So what are you waiting for? Switch it to the higher side.
And while you’re at it, please tell these guys that they’re spoiling it for all the Indians who communicate well in Engish and are trying to market their services worldwide, as they should. (There you go, Kerala Cookies.)
Eye catchy.
That’s good sh*t.
The “or” in the second sentence is perfect.
Are you going to be adding more to this post later, or is this pretty much it?
Stay tuned.
They could have condensed all that to the last two lines and had the exact same meaning: “ornamental words.”
My favorite copywriting, though, is much shorter and can be found on the front page of the Utsav Sarees website: “Our business grows when you are satisfied, completely.”
Not related to this post but more language differences:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/11/travel/funny-signs.html?src=me&ref=general#/4be6b7698e31df5c7d002b29/
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/03/world/asia/20100503_CHINGLISH.html
Hooray! I bargained up a line of bonus content! It’s like a writer’s encore!
Oh come, on, yaar, the guy’s a businessman. He’s hustling with new entrepreneurial spirit of India. Many will understand his version of English perfectly and will perpetuate it to the satisfaction of their audience. It’s maybe a parallel language? You see it all over. In fact, when I worked in Bombay donkeys years ago (a favorite Indianism) a sign painter had painted “Ladies Toylet” outside well…you can figure it out.
I’ll do anything for Kerala Cookies.
I find the fact the white guy in the photo can’t spell in English..hahahha!!
The website has content in Indian English (remember English is actually spoken in India by a lot of people and they do not necessarily have to speak it in the American or British ishtyle). I actually like the confident marketing tone and how it is positive, uplifting, and unapologetic about soliciting business. I hope they succeed and I hope to see more Indian English copy in our various media in the USA. By the way, compared to some of the English spoken/written in this country, the website stuff is grammatically superior.
This is may be technically true, but it’s collectively nonsense.
I don’t think that we can just take this as an example of “Indian English” and leave it at that. There are many Indians who have M.A.s in English and Ph.D.s in linguistics who would cry reading this, but still be totally comfortable using Indian English grammar and turns of phrase (“I’m loving it,” “Please revert by Friday at the latest,” “You said he would be here, no?” etc.) This is not the worst writing I have seen, but it is mediocre at best. If this was “Indian English,” you’d see major Indian newspapers and periodicals written in this style, but they are much more well-written than this, while at the same time keeping their distinctly Indian tone.
For “Indian English,” I’ll give you “eye catchy,” “make a difference on the business world,” and “switch to the higher side,” but those who really want to stand out different and innovative among all others choose us or effective and strong web presence makes more sense than they intend: the reader has a choice between “choosing us” and “effective and strong web presence.” I do not think that is what they meant to say, but I’ll choose the latter, thanks. And this, my friends, is why clarity in copywriting is as important as using those “zing” words.
“And while you’re at it, please tell these guys that they’re spoiling it for all the Indians who communicate well in Engish and are trying to market their services worldwide, as they should.”
While I understand your point, and it’s hard not to laugh at the way some sentences turned out, I think it’s important to distinguish between what is probably a youngish (if that’s his photo) guy with not the best command of the English language (as we understand it) who wants to use the power of the web to further himself and make something of himself in this world. At least he has some sort of ambition/gumption, even if it’s a bit naive. There will be many who will laugh at his writing and never consider using it because it’s not sophisticated enough for their product/needs. However, it’s quite possible his services are good enough for a certain market in India (I think it’s his advertising to outside India that’s a bit more of a problem and too ambitious at this stage). He appears to have a few clients. And maybe he’ll learn as he goes.
It’s hard to make assumptions, and one shouldn’t, but one can imagine him not coming from the upper, elite strata of society with access to convent-educated English or schools which turn out students acquainted with a better quality of Indian English. He’s under no obligation not to spoil it for other Indians. He’s trying to compete and that takes some guts, given the quality of his writing. Just as the guy in the other post who was laughed at for his two different-coloured shirts that would elicit “peals of laughter” in more “sophisticated” South Asian households in the West was trying to “compete” or make his mark in the way he knew about. One assumes they come from a totally different social/economic strata of Indian society and don’t have access to all the “hip” new ad hoc fashion rules or the best quality education in a foreign language. Is it fair to laugh at them given that they don’t have all the resources/more elitist upbringing we all do? We wouldn’t laugh at a poor person making mistakes in their genuine effort to better themselves, and these guys, too, appear to be well-meaning people, if not dirt poor. And I say this having in the past laughed at a lot of people without actually thinking about what their life circumstances may be. There’s a difference between poking fun at someone from your own world, with similar privileges etc., and poking fun at someone who comes from a different world with less access to all those so-called “privileges”. The man in the photo above probably deserves some ribbing given the aim of his poster.
Of course, I could be completely wrong and Mr. Shah could be filthy rich and have received an excellent English-language education in India and just not have been a good learner.
I’m a American raised desi and while visiting my company’s off-shore office in Chennai quite a few co-workers I met extolled the virtues of how Indian English is superior to standard American English (I’m not talking about regional American dialects). I was constantly told that they had mastered the queens English and Americans spoke a vastly inferior form of English. I’m familiar with this argument having grown up listening to every aunty and uncle bring it up. My only point was finding copy like that in the website referred to in a emails and occasionally in publications, while spoken English tended to have inverted sentence structure frequently and was even more mangled.
The brother in the website may be trying to get ahead in the copy writing field but he should at least have tried to have this proof read and got the opinion of someone who does copy writing in the US. Someone above was arguing that everything is relative and he has a right to his version of English, maybe if he was writing experimental prose, but there is a US number listed on his website so I’m assuming he is trying to get US clients. I think it’s just laziness or maybe misguided self confidence in his skills that he feels hypnotized by his the ornamental words.
I agree that his reaching out to the American market is overreaching. And even for the Indian market he does need to improve his English. But if you travel to the Caribbean or other parts of the even the English-speaking world, you will find things that you consider non-standard English in newspapers, marketing copy etc. because it suits the local market. In England they say “I was sat at the cricket………..”, something you wouldn’t see in American usage. To my ears and eyes, “I was sat……” sounds wrong, but in England well-known columnists who graduated from Oxford/Cambridge/the like, use it.
delurker – you are right on about this kid’s drive and probably about where he comes from in life as well. I think it would be quite interesting to see his CV 🙂 Whether he writes properly or not, he definitely has more drive and ambition than probably a lot of convent-educated people who know their privilege will sustain them for the rest of their lives.
That being said, he DOES need a good proofreader. Now if he’s a really smart guy, he’ll hire the convent-educated people to do the actual copywriting while he runs the business development side of things 🙂
“visiting my company’s off-shore office in Chennai”
If you can do this without revealing any personal info, could you let me know the name of the company, and what it takes to get to visit its off-shore office?
Thanks.
http://www.muneekshah.com/clients.html
Don’t miss the quotation marks. Make it sound like: “Hang on while I fabricate a client list.” (Yes, I know that’s a bit of a mean observation, so save it.)
Note that all the prices are in dollars. It’ll be sad if he’s all starry eyed and has invested money he didn’t really have in a course, maybe, or computer equipment.
@ 15 –
“I’m a American raised desi”
who does your copy writing ;-0
19, True it could all be made up.
He does have some links to what I presume are clients under portfolio.
How did Melvin stumble upon this website?
.
Yes – unfortunately this is often believed to be true.
A global language has many variants. eg is the Tamil spoken in Chennai superior to the one spoken in Singapore or one spoken in Mayiladathurai. English is now a global language and every culture modifies it as its own. Australians can talk to each other in English and the Americans / Canadians / South Africans would not understand. And vice versa – ok prob not for the Americans 🙂
The website above is poor Indian English but then English is not an indicator entrepreneurial spirit in India 🙂 – if anything inversely proportional.
@15, Irony, I’m not sure how to describe someone who was born in India and raised in the US since he was 5. If you know a better way of describing that … you are hired as my copy writer :).
Okay, so this was hysterical….but, unfortunately, when I’m in India visiting my relatives and attempting to have rational and coherent conversations with them in Hindi, I’m sure I sound not too different from this poor kid.
If anything else was being pitched I would be at ease, but a content writing service? It is simply too atrocious for that
@15, Irony, I’m not sure how to describe someone who was born in India and raised in the US since he was 5. If you know a better way of describing that … you are hired as my copy writer :).
I think the comment was about usage of the indefinite article – maybe i am wrong !! not your upbringing.
The bane of English….
Agreed. Most of my co-workers at an English school in Delhi were Indians who had degrees in English and spoke it fluently. Of course there are differences in Indian English, as there are in Australian English, British English, and American English, but Indian English still follows grammar rules, and, ahem, makes sense. This kid, while flying high in the entrepreneurial spirit, is flying low in the technical skills portion of, er, doing something that makes money.
I found it through the company that designed the website.
Yeah, it would be like me giving singing lessons. I do agree that the guy has “ambition/gumption,” which is a big part of success. Lots of people have talent, but don’t put themselves out there. This guy is at least trying, even if he’s the William Hung of content writing.
“I found it through the company that designed the website.”
Thanks.
I wish my prose was more eye catchy. Just give me a seconds and I will make it more heart winning.