Brand Zero

Amul – The Brand of India

Since our childhood we have known a butter to be the taste of India and that very butter aided by a little girl dressed in polka dotted frock and a mop of hair on her forehead went on to become the brand of India.Amul over time has managed to capture not only market share across India but also the nation’s imagination. The brand which has now become synonymous as the “Taste of India” has its genesis in the whim of a freedom fighter to start a butter brand with an Indian name; Mr. Tribhuvan Das – a freedom fighter wanted to start a butter brand with an Indian name, everybody tried to dissuade him from doing so since the current trend was to name brands after English names.Tribhuvan Das was adamant and decided to name it AMUL (Anand Milk Producers Union Limited) and thus was born the brand which in times to come was to capture the imagination of every Indian. Now managed by the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF) the brand has its origin in Anand –the sleepy little town from Gujarat, founded in 1945 the brand has went on to become the best example of success of the co-operative formula.

The Branding Story

The branding of Amul is a legend in itself; to begin with the brand was being managed by FCB Ulka who were thoroughly into corporate advertising and gave the brand a very dreary image. The account was clinched from the hands of FCB Ulka by Sylvester Da Cunha from ASP (Advertising Sales and Promotion), Sylvester a legend in the making started his own ship in 1967 which went by the name Da Cunha Communications and thus was born the now famous Amul Moppet (Obsolete English for baby). The Amul Girl now 41 years old (and still with the mop of hair intact) first appeared on hoardings in Mumbai (than Bombay) in the year 1967. Most of us are not aware of the fact that the Amul Girl was conceived by Sylvester and Eustace Fernandez (the art director) as an answer to the rival brand Polson butter’s “Polson Butter Girl”. The brief given to the ASP team (comprising of K Kurian, Eustace Fernandes, Sylvester Da Cunha and Usha Katrak) was to dislodge Polson from the market leader’s position in Bombay. In the year 1966 - 50% of the Bombay public was not even aware that a brand like Amul existed so the ASP team decided in favour of an outdoor ad campaign which initially consisted of 17 hoardings across Bombay, painted bus panels and a few thousand posters splattered across Bombay. The hoardings made generalist statements in the year 1966 but once the account moved to Da Cunha Communications in the year 1967 it was decided to give the brand a stronger viewpoint and from then onwards Amul has went on to become the best social observer India has ever seen (rivaled by cartoonist Laxman). The real twist in the tale came in 1976 when the brand started taking on controversial issues like Emergency or the Compulsory Sterilization Programme launched by the Indira Gandhi Government.

From that day forward the brand has become one of the longest running campaigns in the world and is even vying for a place in the Guiness Book of World Records. The account is still with Da Cunha Communications – managed by Rahul Da Cunha (Sylvester Da Cunha’s son) and they still take shots at the latest issues ranging from Tibet to the Olympic Torch Run to Shahrukh Khan singing for the Indian Premier League – which they have labeled as Indian Premier Lick – Amul butter.

 Varun Bhardwaj