By RENELLE SNELLEKSZ
Indiantelevision.com Team

(11 April 2007 8:00 pm)

In-store posters at the Blossom book store

MUMBAI: It's improbable that a sentence that reads…"Slept with three, wanting more" or "Widow seeks partner for live-in relationship" will not grab your attention! For what could result as a negative connotation if attributed to someone, is a campaign conceptualised by Mudra that has done the rounds in the city of Bangalore spreading the word of a second-hand book store called Blossom - 'the house of used books.'

Regarded by some as 'preposterous,' the underlying humour in the expressions only emerge when one realizes that it relates to the journey of the books before they landed up at Blossom.

Advertisments inserted within the matrimonial section of newspapers

A rare case study for a 'buzz' generating advertising campaign, creative agency Mudra South spins a yarn for Indiantelevision.com as creative director Jagdish Acharya narrates, "It all started with a few book lovers at Mudra who were so inspired by the book store that they offered to create a couple of posters that personified books. What kicked off in January last year as a one-off activity of in-store posters that visually depicted the different genres of these 'used' books through a broken Cinderella shoe or Sherlock Holms patched up hat, has now in its second year taken the form of what some may call 'scandalous,' but has definitely got people talking."

This year, Mudra decided to thrust it a step ahead and take the print route by placing taglines such as "Separated. Seeking a suitable companion for short term relationship" or "A divorcee seeks one-night-stand" in the Classified section of broadsheets like The Hindu and Indian Express, as if it were the books 'soliciting' their lovers (the readers) in the matrimonial columns.

Mudra likes to refer to its association with Blossom as having "an unadulterated creative deal: no commercial expectations and no creative roadblocks."

"The challenge was to strengthen the endearment that the book lovers have with this quirky bookstore."

Another in-store poster of the campaign

Blossom founder Mayi Gowda, tells us that the campaign received such a welcoming response the first time that he decided to go ahead with it the second time round. These catchy phrases depicting the journey that the books have had over the years have got customers wanting a copy of their own poster. "I decided that instead I would use these phrases to create book marks that I could give to the book lovers that come in," says Gowda.

What earned Mudra a silver metal at the Times Asia-Pacific awards and two regional awards for the initial poster campaign in 2006, has got them excited to extend this campaign to matrimonial websites or SMS alerts in the future.

This second hand book store was launched in Bangalore in 2001 and has now expanded to include three stories of whats it calls "a book lovers' paradise."