Somewhere in India right now, a marketing meeting is deciding to “add some Hinglish” to make a campaign feel relatable. Sometimes that works beautifully. More often it produces a sentence no human has ever said, delivered with the confidence of a press release. The difference is not the language. It is whether the brand is listening or performing.
When it lands
When it is how your customer actually talks. If the people who buy from you switch between Hindi and English in every sentence, a brand that only speaks formal English sounds like a government notice. Mixing is not lowering the tone. It is matching it.
When it is specific. The best Hinglish lines borrow one exact word that English can’t carry. Jugaad. Timepass. Thoda adjust kar lo. Each one brings a whole feeling with it, and the reader fills in the rest.
When it sounds like a person. Read it aloud. If it sounds like something your friend would text, keep it. If it sounds like something a brand would say about your friend, start again.
When it doesn’t
When the slang is borrowed. Words picked from last month’s memes date faster than milk. By the time the campaign is approved, the joke is already a little embarrassing.
When the register is wrong. People want their bank, their hospital and their insurance company to sound calm and clear. “Paisa safe hai, boss” is fun on a T-shirt. It is less fun on a loan agreement.
When it is translated, not written. An English line with a Hindi word dropped in for flavour reads like what it is. Good Hinglish is written in Hinglish from the first draft.
When every sentence does it. Seasoning, not the whole dish. One well-placed phrase per piece is usually more charming than a paragraph of it.
The question isn’t “should we use Hinglish?” It’s “how do our people actually speak?”
A small test
Before a line goes out, read it to someone who is not in marketing. A cousin, a neighbour, the person who makes your chai. If they smile, it lands. If they wince, or worse, explain it back to you, it doesn’t. No brand guideline has ever been more accurate than a mausi’s raised eyebrow.
We use it ourselves, sparingly. One of us is listed on the editorial board as Wasooli Bhai, and no English title has ever described a job quite so precisely.