Recently I’ve taken a special interest in a rather niche segment of marketing – those done by loan sharks. Johor Bahru (or JB – city in Malaysia) has a very high density of these (theoretically?) illegal money-lending businesses, catering to anybody from gamblers seeking a quick rescue to ‘proper’ businessmen needing just that bit more cash flow.
Growing up, I had the common impression of loansharks where they are generally underground – where you need some sort of mafia-connection to get access to it. In JB this is a lot more ‘above-the-line’, where you’d see signs and phone numbers pasted all over, on practically every surface you can find.
Recently though, I get impressed yet again with their level of ’marketing professionalism’ – just received this set of brochures (only showing the front/back):
Check out the amount of design and creative direction (everything from layout, typography, photography to copy-writing, consistency in theme between the 3 separate brochures) that went into promoting their services: simply impressive!
