The Brief

Advertising paints in India has acquired a language of its own. Beautiful houses. Bright Paints. Happy families. Stagnant ideas. Nerolac wanted to appeal to the vast majority of India that didn't live in mansions. There is an overdose of color in almost every corner of India. And it runs riot at Kumbh, a fair that happens once every 12 years. The idea was simple. Find a shade. Look for that exact shade in our portfolio. Put up a color swatch right beside the color, mentioning the name of the shade in our shade card.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

We employed a device that almost every Indian recognizes - a shade card. The colors were already present at the fair. All we did was attach a shade card to the colors. If there is a color, we have the paint. The message was simple and clear. But the most mind blowing statistic in the campaign was this: We spent USD 18 to appeal to 5 million devotees. That's a cost per contact of 0.0000036 cents !

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

We had set out to show the innumerable shades of Nerolac house paints to a lot of people at as less a cost as possible. At the Maha Kumbh Mela, we ended up targeting over 5 million people; at less than $18. That's a cost per contact of 0.0000036 cents

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The moment you reach the Kumbh Mela, it is a sensorial assault. The sounds, the smells, the sights,are all irreplicable. For the first few seconds it was hard to believe that there are so many colors in the world. The next few moments were spent thinking there is no way so many colors can be matched by anyone else. And then to realize that Nerolac has a shade swatch matching almost every color the eye can distinguish, just left us with a sense of awe; and this was when we already knew the purpose and point of the exercise.