Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Vegetarian Society of India "Nodding Bull"

Ironically, in the home of vegetarianism 69% of Indians are non-vegetarian. Their clients, The Vegetarian Society of India, sought to arrest this rapid decline in their believers by hosting the World Vegetarian Conference in India. Being a non-profit organization, they had our task cut out. They had to re-new that faith of the masses by drawing traffic toward the conference. They had to do so in a clutter-cutting YET cost-effective manner. And they had to appeal to their core beliefs in doing so. The Hindu faith has great belief in the mythological divine bull 'Nandi' which is represented by the famous nodding bull. Unequivocally revered as the purveyor of justice and through it was the perfect mascot for the purpose. Hence they used it as the mascot to deliver the vegetarianism message. The medium was mobile. The bull traveled to towns and residential areas catching people when they are walking on the road completely unawares and resulted in huge eyeballs due to its novelty value. It was impossible to do grassroots level comm. through mass media. By making their communication appeal to a core belief and using an icon which quite literally had divine powers, there was no better way that the cause of vegetarianism could be propagagted.

Agency: JWT, India.