Stains are Good!

Been a long time since I discovered and/or wrote about examples of paradox thinking. You may know this if you're a keen observer of advertising in the Indian Media......especially visual media. There was a time when all advertisers demonstrated the pain of removing stains from clothes. The advertisement would be focused on proving how easy it was to remove stains with the product under question as compared to other competitive products. Period.

And then....someone in the advertising world suddenly woke up and thought otherwise. He/she adopted paradox thinking and created a lovely advertisement that said "Stains are good!". It shook most of us. We were intrigued. We wanted to know why. We wanted to understand the logic behind it. We thoroughly enjoyed the first such ad. It showed two little siblings get closer when the girl fell into a mud puddle and the brother pretended to fight with the puddle for what it had 'done' to his little sister. There were more such advertisements following the resounding success of the first. The advts. revolved around how stains could bring people closer, stop fights on the road, and- the latest - stop someone's hiccups. (I wonder if I missed any other such advts. given that I am not a regular TV-watcher). The subtle message, of course, was that we should not avoid stains when they could do so much good and the product under question was anyway available for removing stains in a jiffy! :-)

I love all these advts. I am sure they've had an impact on most people. Proves that one of the best ways to bring some excitement into life is through paradox thinking. Have you experienced it?