A Kerala Tourism print ad (wall poster)

 The following is a new print ad by Kerala Tourism at the Dubai International Airport:

The ad is quite well executed: the models well selected, the contrasting landscapes of the Gulf region and Kerala come out well, and the messaging understood well enough by the local audience, even if not by all the international tourists that transit through Dubai. However, one main problem with the ad is the print's colour saturation.

The colors should be richer, that is, more saturated. I took the photo in the early morning hours, when artificial lighting is still holding forte and sun has not taken over. In the daytime, this ad, with its poorly saturated colours, will fade into the wall, so to say. On the other hand, given that the ads are placed along moving walkways, if the colors were richer, the ads would have jumped out and forced themselves even into tired transiting passengers' senses.

There are of course other quibbles: there wasn't any need to show grass on the Dubai side in the left picture. It would be better to show a multi-lane traffic scene of Dubai: that would be more authentic, too. In the right-hand picture, the pose could have been bolder: the girl breaking the fourth wall, so to speak, looking invitingly into the camera. A girl wearing a hijab looking invitingly into the camera is not just bold, but a message that would resonate. Right now, you don't know what the girl is feeling: is she wishing to be somewhere else and just taking this vacation as an escape? I would also have shown the image of Thrissur's Pooram festival or Ananthapuram's lava fields rather than just palm trees, palm trees, palm trees, as in the first picture. There is a lot of competition of palms, isn't it? Maldives, Bali, Malaysia, ... not just Kerala.