What first comes to your mind when you say advertising, to the layman, he would say he sees ads everyday on TV, in newspapers, magazines, on the internet, billboards, ads on public transport etc...

Being a media planner, I was always urged to think of new and innovative media to reach out to my client's target audience to beat the clutter, a media which reached my target bang on. But sadly whatever out of the box ideas, I would think of, would be rejected because the client thought they were not good enough or that he would be ridiculed or that the monies were too much to be invested, or that the market would not accept the ad, so on and so forth that I stopped thinking out of the box, not because I couldn't, but because my client couldn't, however hard he tried.

Many months later my client called me inviting me to Ad Asia' a conference cum funfair for 3 days , where all the ad industry and media industry bigwigs would be there, conferences on marketing, free stay , food etc.. ; Basically a meeting place for all media people to come together and mingle in a non official environment. It was a big buzz in the industry and all were talking about it, he said there would be 4 of us, including me. It was a really big thing and I immediately took the offer.

The venue to the funfair was in the desert state of Rajasthan. We had a good time and we really enjoyed and learnt a lot. On the second day we were exhausted of all the seminars and decided to go for small ride around town, and see the desert scape. We took an auto rickshaw (a three wheeler) and ventured out of the venue into the lonely desert roads.
The driver said he would take us to an old fort close by. After driving along for around 45 minutes, which seemed like hours, with hot desert hair burning our skin and face, our throats parched, at a distance we could see something like black and red spots on the road ahead, we first thought it was a mirage and as we neared ahead we realised it was a herd of black buffalos, each one of them had a red bottle painted on them and a line below that read Thirsty? Coca-Cola ahead!'

And as a media planner, at that time I thought, I thought this was the best medium, bang on, no clutter, hitting g the target audience on the face and at a time when he is desperately seeking the product. It was a media planner, marketers, and every ad guys dream cum true situation. And I think that's an advertising method you won't believe!

Learn more about this author, Jyoti Hariharan.
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