India's Most Trusted Brand

After finding one brilliant print ad, I went out searching across the Internet and found another. This one, for India's Nilkamal Plastic Chairs, shows a circus with its arguably largest act, an elephant, positioned a bit precariously on a tiny plastic chair.
     
I absolutely love this ad for several reasons. Not just because of  the clever way the company hints at exactly how strong "India's most trusted" plastic chair is, by placing an elephant upon it in the picture, but also because of the great amount of color and detail that went into the image. Nowhere do you see a single bit of wasted space, everywhere there is life and festivity. And that is exactly what draws the audience to it. The fact that it is so colorful, so lively, is what makes it so attractive to the eye.

The second thing, as mentioned before, is the detail and deliberateness, and of how much of this quality is present in the advertisement. The performers, for one thing, are purposely placed all around the image so as to frame the elephant, and draw even more attention to it. Many of them are in mirrored positions, such as the contortionists in the front, the unicyclers in the middle, and the men on stilts in the back, so as to increase the centralized effect.

Then there is the elephant itself. It carries a magnificent drapery on its back, upon which is a lotus design very similar to the lotus logo of the plastic chair company. Not to mention the giant "N" on the band around its forehead, which obviously stands for Nilkamal's name. But perhaps the most effective detail on the elephant at promoting the company is the expression on its face. It seems a bit fearful, as if it, like potential consumers, is unsure as to how dependable the chair is at holding up its weight. It is worth mentioning that the animal's eyes are focused downwards, upon the chair, which draws further attention to the product.

The only trouble with this ad, is that even with its spare use of text, it manages to use weasel words in promoting its merchandise. Without concrete facts or statistics, it is hard to prove that Nilkamal Plastic Chairs is indeed "India's most trusted" brand. And of course, because of the limited amount of words, the phrase is subject to a bit of vagueness. What exactly does it mean to be "trusted", let alone the "most trusted"? This is never answered, and yet never needs to be. The image of an elephant on a chair, combined with the above phrase, allows the audience to project their own meaning; this chair can be relied upon to take any amount of weight, even that of a two ton pachyderm.