Amul Butter Girl......... The moppet who put Amul on India’s breakfast table. 50 years and still going strong. No other brand comes even close to it. All because a thumb-sized girl climbed on to the hoardings and put a spell on the masses. Call her the Friday to Friday star. Round eyed, chubby cheeked, winking at you, from strategically placed hoardings at many traffic lights.
She is the Amul moppet everyone loves to love (including prickly votaries of the Shiv Sena and BJP). How often have we stopped, looked, chuckled at the Amul hoarding that casts her sometime as the coy, shy Madhuri, a bold sensuous Urmila or simply as herself, dressed in her little polka dotted dress and a red and white bow, holding out her favourite packet of butter.
For 30 odd years the Utterly Butterly girl has managed to keep her fan following intact. So much so that the ads are now ready to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for being the longest running campaign ever. The ultimate compliment to the butter came when a British company launched a butter and called it Utterly Butterly, last year. For the first one year the ads made statements of some kind or the other but they had not yet acquired the topical tone.
In 1969, when the city first saw the beginning of the Hare Rama Hare Krishna movement, Sylvester daCunha, Mohammad Khan and Usha Bandarkar, then the creative team working on the Amul account came up with a clincher -- ’Hurry Amul, Hurry Hurry’. Bombay reacted to the ad with a fervour that was almost as devout as the Iskon fever. That was the first of the many topical ads that were in the offing. From then on Amul began playing the role of a social observer.
Over the years the campaign acquired that all important Amul touch. India looked forward to Amul’s evocative humour. If the Naxalite movement was the happening thing in Calcutta, Amul would be up there on the hoardings saying, ’’Bread without Amul Butter, cholbe na cholbe na (won’t do, won’t do). If there was an Indian Airlines strike Amul would be there again saying, Indian Airlines Won’t Fly Without Amul.
Some of my favourite Topicals this year :
Baa Zee Jeet Gaye : On the issue of Zee Telefilms clinching the Cricket telcast rights for the four year period again ESPN-Star. Spt 2004
Greek Tragedy : India’s dsimal performance at Athens Olympics 2004- Aug
Amool: Launch of Zoom. Indias first family and lifestyle entertainment television channel.
Coach Coach Hota Hai : On railway ministry Laloo Prasad Yadavs proposed populisr rail budget : July 2004.
Hum Tere Tere Tere Chahanewale Hai : Obituary on Bollywood’s well-loved comedian Mehmod.
Going from Ad to worse : Disappointing performance by Indian Cricket team in Holland Tri-Series.
Vivah la France : hight profiel wedding of NRI steel tycoon Lakshimi Mithal’s daughter in France
Dismiss India : Lakshmi Pandit losing the Ponds Feminas Miss India Crown over her marraige controversy
Will share somemore next year.