And in this
part of the country people take it pretty seriously. Having travelled various
parts of country (both north and south), it hard to miss the uncanny vibrance
of South India, the colours and sound around demand your attention, as if they
speak louder than the words themselves.
In recent
times visual and audio have been powerful marketing strategies of the companies
but to see it at the ground implemented by the small vendors in their day to
day trade was amazing. To give gist of what made me think so, I have been
travelling around the markets near the great lakes the mahabs, kalpakam,
annupuram and the most evident thing I saw are the colours, the colours of the
shops, the billboards, the advertisement, the use of GREEN, YELLOW and ORANGE
is a must, the florescent shades of these colours used widely.
To reaffirm
my observation I asked a few shop owners about why are their counters
florescent orange and yellow, the response was Orange is a good colour, happy
colour. This made me think that this is the taste of the common man, I viewed
around and to my amazement ladies were in all kinds of flashy coloured sarees
and the glitter of the gold (yellow metal) complementing them. Moving forward
to cloth market the display were even flashier, at one shop a dummy was dressed
in six different vibrant colours (hat, t-shirt, jacket, hanky, jeans(red) and
boots). As I entered a fruit shop the display of a very big heart made up of
Oranges, Mausambi(green) and apples (red) and it created and amazing effect, I
asked the shopkeeper why did he do that, he said “because of it you come my
shop not other one just by seeing that”, his reason was confirmed when I asked
a few other fellow customers.
As for the
different part of the country where more soft and grey shades of colours are
preferred, and maybe I am presumptuous some so called niche societies think
black and white are more elegant but not this part and not this people. You can
spot the difference through houses, shop shutters, different colored rice in
their meals and many more day-to-day things that shows vibrant colours are the
part of life. Contrary to my above assumption that marketing companies bring
out this strategy, I observed, it is the taste and liking of the people that
they have understood and designed their billboards.
Punkit Jain
FT13457
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