It’s that time of the year when businesses hop on the patriotic bandwagon with cheesy National Day-themed products. We already have one casualty in Giordano, which clearly needs some help with its Photoshop skills.
This time, it’s Maki-San that’s experiencing the aftermath of a backfired marketing attempt after rolling out its National Day-themed roll (pun intended), a chicken char siew sushi roll. Named ‘Maki Kita’ — a spin on the words “Mari Kita” from the national anthem, which means means “let us” in Bahasa Melayu — Maki-San chose this peculiar name, which actually means “curse us” or “insult us”.
This comment explains it all.
Unsurprisingly, the brand was not spared the throes of perdition on social media — and with Maki-San being really popular among Malay Singaporeans because of its Halal certification, there was no doubt some annoyance at the misplaced pun.
But a lot more were beguiled by the fact that the company was completely oblivious to the true meaning of the word before releasing it. Some netizens commented that this faux pas reflected a lack of diversity in the marketing department and called for a little more tact when launching ad campaigns. Even atas chicken rice purveyors Makcik Chicken (who marketed itself very well) had something to say about this:
What’s funnier is the way the pun was emboldened in the ad, as if it was a badge of honor, leaving everyone highly amused. Luckily, Maki-San made good with its PR recovery, apologizing on Facebook and acknowledging the mistake on its part — which is much better than just trying to cover it up (see here and here).
So the new name for the National Day-themed rolls have since been changed to Harmony Maki, which doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well — but hey, at least Maki-San’s actually listening and responding to customer feedback.
