[ad_1]
I joined Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Association (Amol) in 1991 as a Brand Manager, and one of my first assignments was working in the advertising department. While taking on the responsibilities of my predecessor, I had to meet with our advertising agencies. DaCunha Communications (DCA) has been responsible for branding many of our products such as Butter, Cheese, Milk, Nutramul, etc. Sylvester da Cunha for the first time.
He was a quiet man who never minced his words. He never shies away from a challenge, and I think that spirit was really reflected in Amol Girl. It was her voice and soul, and generations of our customers have attested to that since 1966 when she first appeared on Kenz.
At Amul, we believe there is a trinity of leaders – Tribhuvandas Patel, the founding president, HM Dalaya, the dairy specialist, and Verghese Kurien, the technocrat who was responsible for building this organisation.
Similarly, in Amul Advertising too, we had a trinity of deans like K Kurian of Radeus Advertising, JN Chatterjee of ASP, Sylvester daCunha of DCA, and they were later joined by Anil Kapoor of Ulka.
daCunha’s “Perfectly Bowly” Amul campaign has created a unique image for our brand in the minds of millions of our customers over four generations. His contributions to Amul shaped the story of the nation. Before “The Nation Wants To Know” became famous, he and his team, Eustace Fernandez and Usha Katrak, were the true voice of the nation. They spoke through Amol girl. Today, we have the entire India journey over five decades chronicled through our Amul Topical Campaign.
When Kurian met D’Acunha in the 1950s and gave him the mandate to work on the Amul Butter campaign, the latter found the category boring. If we can challenge the norm in advertising, he said, we will make progress. One of the first challenges was getting the connection right. Amul Butter, in his early 1950s campaigns, had the slogan “The Purely Best”. DaCunha then revised it to “Absolutely Buttery Delicious.” It was coined by Nisha Dakonha, Sylvester’s wife. It wasn’t grammatically correct, but it reflected the innocence of a child who spoke her mind.
In our coffee table book, Amul India, Sylvester Dacunha shares his memories of working on his first hoarding. There were many factors to consider while creating an Amul girl. Bombay in the 1950s and 1960s saw an influx of international brands of butter. There was also an Indian brand called Polson Butter with a British girl mascot. Eustace Fernandez and Dacuna worked on various designs and finally agreed on a little Indian girl with round eyes, full cheeks and no nose, who would wear a red plaid dress and tie around her hair. They wanted to create a girl who would make her way into the heart of the housewife. Today, it has a place in the heart of every Indian. The campaign was so successful that all the other brands had to close shop and India found Indian Butter.
Corian and Dacona were innovators. The first video advertisement of the Amul Girl was shown in cinemas in 1969. Her presence has been featured in every media as she has evolved from billboards to cinema to press, television and social media. Throughout this entire journey, one thing has set me apart from every other campaign. Amul Topical designs have not been reviewed or approved by us in the last 50 years. Even today, we see them at the same time as their release in the media. This is probably the only agency in the world that can do this, and the credit for earning the client’s trust goes to ad guy daCunha.
Kurian trusted daCunha and this belief in him enabled the freedom that provided the right environment to create the world’s longest running advertising campaign. Today, we still maintain the same faith in Rahul Dacunha and his team who will take his father’s legacy to greater heights.
The campaign has presented itself well for social media and therefore also gets instant response, which is a challenge for any client and agency. From the two topics each month that appeared on billboards in the early days, the frequency has now increased to three to four per week.
Today, we are indebted to the hard work of these great men who created a legacy upon which to build our nation’s future. Amul is a cooperative brand owned by 3.6 million farmers and is the largest FMCG brand with annual sales of Rs 72,000 crore.
Over the past 32 years in Amul I have made many fond memories and felt proud to be working here. But one thing I will always carry with me is the honor of being part of the team responsible for the Amul Girl campaign, and I thank Sylvester D’Acunha for creating it, nurturing it, and creating a space for it in every Indian’s heart and a place on every breakfast table.
We will miss you, sir.
The writer is the Managing Director of Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd, Amul
[ad_2]
