Marketing in Malaysia
The classifieds section of the New Straits Times makes interesting reading. Alongside adverts from parents searching for wives for their sons ("Parents of Malaysian Telugu professional fair looking gentleman seek sincere Hindu God fearing professional ladies in view to marriage. Must be willing to migrate to UK."), there's the "Domestic Help/Foreign Workers" section (funny, don't remember that section in the Banbury Guardian).
What caught my eye was a photo advert, showing a happy Indonesian maid looking after two smiling Malaysian children, with the headline "Free Replacement 12 months for runaway". After reading the Malaysian newspaper headlines over the last week of the maids that get beaten by their employers, or worse ("Scalded by a Red Hot Iron" boasted the NS Times today), I guess it must be quite an attractive selling point if you're looking to hire a maid and then treat them badly. For all the similarities of Asia to Europe, it's a very different world sometimes.
What caught my eye was a photo advert, showing a happy Indonesian maid looking after two smiling Malaysian children, with the headline "Free Replacement 12 months for runaway". After reading the Malaysian newspaper headlines over the last week of the maids that get beaten by their employers, or worse ("Scalded by a Red Hot Iron" boasted the NS Times today), I guess it must be quite an attractive selling point if you're looking to hire a maid and then treat them badly. For all the similarities of Asia to Europe, it's a very different world sometimes.