Colour sells

Sabil Francis

agencyfaqs!

NEW DELHI, October 10

Whenever you see colour think of us.

This was the brief Dainik Jagran gave its direct marketing agency, Grey Direct, the direct marketing division of Trikaya Grey Advertising India Pvt. Ltd.

Grey Direct came up with an innovative way to deliver the message. To promote Danik Jagran's colour supplement called "Saptrang", the company based its campaign idea on the theme, "colour, use it freely."

A Kathakali dancer delivers direct mailers to media buying houses and advertising agencies across the country. The message? Switch on the colour. Switch from black and white advertising to colour supplements.

It seems to have worked. It's just three weeks since the campaign started and on an average colour advertising has jumped from between 200 and 300-column cm to about 600 to 700 column cm. "The whole idea was to keep up with the festive spirit. We wanted to say that colour is part of your life," says Shailesh Gupta, director, Dainik Jagran.

Dainik Jagran combined innovation with some shrewd marketing, offering one colour ad free with two others. That meant that advertisers had to pay just Rs 2,000 for three ads in the paper. The inspiration was to splash colour across the dull and stuffy business pages.

Why Kathakali? Kathakali, literally meaning `story-play', originated in the 17th century in Kerala. It's an all-male art form similar to ballet. Actors dressed up in colourful customs wildly move on stage like dervishes, portraying tales from the epics. What remains with the viewer is the idea of brilliant colour on a brightly lit stage, as day fades into night.

"Kathakali is a striking example of the use of colour, and our target was the advertising fraternity, a very evolved audience. We had to get the message across in the best way possible," says Kaushik Roy, account director at Grey Direct. The creative team at Grey Direct also felt that Kathakali was the most colourful dance form in the country.

Grey Direct is also releasing a series of print ads, again with the Kathakali theme. Next in line is a punk with wildly dyed hair cut in the Mohawk style, and then an advertisement, in time for Diwali, which shows poster colours opening up like firecrackers, in various shapes.

The idea of using vibrant colours to get a message across has its roots in market research. For example, American fast food chain McDonald's increased sales by putting more pictures than words on its menu cards.

It is also the principle behind trade shows. With video walls and other visual devices, interactive kiosks, software resources and even some entertainers, like magicians dressed in colourful customs, the customer gets the message quick.

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