Amul girl at 50: Looking back at her utterly butterly delicious adventures

The moppet has been the narrator of a changing India

Fifty years. Think of all that five decades in India could possibly encapsulate - 13 governments, 5 censuses, 2 generations, myriad emotions and the Amul girl. Mascot of a butter brand, the Amul girl articulates what the nation really wants to know. Keeping her ear to the ground, she mostly echoes the public sentiment on every issue - be it national or international, politics or pop culture. The fearless, noseless, ageless narrator of a changing India recently turned 50. Who are the cast of characters lending voice to the country's most talkative moppet? To find out, let us rewind to circa 1960s.

THREE'S COMPANY: Jayant Rane, Rahul da Cunha and Manish Jhaveri
THE BIRTH
Before Amul became the market leader for butter in India, the brand that held the distinction was Polson. Owned by visionary businessman Pestonji Edulji Dalal - whose nickname was Polly - Polson offered an additional incentive of gift coupons that came with each pack, which only added to its soaring popularity among urban Indian households. Its icon was a young, sophisticated girl with blonde hair who would be seen buttering her toast. The catchline was simple: "Children Love Polson's Butter: Guard Their Health and Give Them The Best". Amul, though formed two decades ago, had not managed to make a similar impact. A reason why, in 1966, when Sylvester da Cunha's company Advertising and Sales Promotion (ASP) finally won the account for Amul, he and his art director Eustace Fernandes realised the need to create an image for the brand so powerful, so eloquent, that it could hope to dethrone Polson's prim-and-proper girl.
Sylvester and Eustace brainstormed with the team at ASP, and came up with an icon of a chubby girl who would wear a polka-dotted dress and wouldn't have a nose. She would be armed with a sharp tongue, mouthing puns that could relate the trend of the time with the butter. In short, everything about her would be irreverent as compared to the gentle Polson mascot. And that's how the iconic Amul girl was born.
With the imagery getting everyone's vote of confidence, the challenge was now to make an impact with the first ad. During those days, a television set wasn't a common sight in middle class households and print ads were too expensive. Finally, decision was taken to put the Amul girl on a hoarding. One of the first ads placed her atop a horse (to signify the trend of horse racing that was catching up then) with a catchline "Thoroughbread".
An adorable moppet with sharp wit - the Amul girl had finally 'arrived'.
THE NURTURING
Five decades later, breathing life into an ageless Amul girl today are three men who have spent considerable part of their lives giving her a voice and a purpose. Sylvester da Cunha's son Rahul has been spearheading the campaign since the early '90s and has continued to do so at a time when change has been the only constant in the country. "My task is to navigate through issues. The main thing is to remain relevant and contemporary. What is making people angry? What are they reacting to?"
Every Monday morning, the da Cunha Communications office in Mumbai bustles with energy. That's when Rahul and copywriter Manish Jhaveri meet to discuss a basket of topics - both national as well as international - that the Amul girl could talk about in the campaigns for the week. Once the idea receives a nod from the team, Manish comes up with two or three potential lines to go with the campaign before handing over the task of illustrating the graphic to Jayant Rane, who typically takes two or three hours to draw the entire topical. Sounds deceptively simple, doesn't it?
The time when Sylvester and his team took over the reins of Amul's campaign was different. As Rahul observes, "Back in those days, things were steady and constant. We have entered an interesting time in the country where today is actually completely different from tomorrow." The real challenge for the team is to comment on socially, politically ambiguous issues in the age of social media where some subjects can lead to polarising, heated debates.
In the past, Amul has had its own share of controversies. A few years ago, leading Indian newspaper Times of India reported how the multinational conglomerate Sahara threatened to sue Amul's parent body Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation for a topical that took a dig at the news of the company allegedly collecting INR 100,000 ($1500) from each of its employees in order to raise INR 5,000 crore ($750 million) to bail out its head Subrata Roy. Standing next to two employees of Sahara begging for money, the Amul girl was spotted with the catchline "Besahara Parivaar" (helpless family), punning on the company's Sahara Parivar line. The Saharas were clearly not amused.
This incident, along with a slew of small controversies that died their natural death, beg a larger question: Does the Amul girl often tread the thin line between what is acceptable and what isn't? Senior journalist and author Indrajit Hazra says she is largely safe. "Being bang in the middle of mainstream - billboards, print media ads - the power of comic 'timing' of her puns, synced with the visual caricatures of known entities, she has negotiated being critical with her genteel, high school-friendly humour. That, to me, is a strategy by which she riles no one and yet leaves behind a fingerwag. Her brand of humour is safe and yet does its job. She is troll-protected."
There is considerable truth in that claim. For most part of her 50-year-old journey, the Amul girl has found a sweet spot right in the middle of a controversial issue. Sidharth Bhatia, founder editor of the news and views platform The Wire, who has also written about the campaign's impact in the book Amul's India 3.0, vividly remembers his favourite topical that took on two of the most powerful men in India. "I remember one in 2004, when the Ambani brothers split, there was a topical showing the two with their mother, who is dividing a slab of butter. The headline read 'Share the Bread Equally', bread being slang for money and the strap said, 'Rely On It', which was a pun on Reliance."
Bhatia, like Hazra, observes that Amul has a tradition of making fun, which is widely acceptable because of its endearing quality. Yet, he warns, the topicals might have begun to reek of predictability. "I think in recent years, there has been too much use of the pun and sometimes it looks stretched. The emphasis seems to be on word play rather than wit or comment. When it just comments on a development, it can be quite good. They don't need to constantly find something clever to say; just an observation, cleverly done, would be enough. The brand is unshakeable now."

THE VOICE
Her 'jolly-good-fellow' image might have given the Amul girl some leeway, but for copywriter Manish Jhaveri, there are none. Tasked with the job of writing clever, catchy lines on tricky issues, Manish often finds himself in search of balance, even on issues where he may have a strong point of view. Ask him about the singularly most challenging assignment in recent times and he is ready with an answer. "Demonetisation. When it was announced, the views were too polarising. You couldn't have been vitriolic, neither could you support it." Over the years, Manish has introduced Hinglish to the Amul girl's vocabulary, making her even more accessible to the urban Indian middle class that is as fluent in English as it is in Hindi.
Social media has been another game changer. While it has helped the team gauge public sentiment more accurately, it has also ensured that the output is multiplied. Earlier, they would come up with nearly five topicals a month, today they work on as many topicals in a week. While Amul does have strong readership online, Rahul says print is as relevant to them now as ever. "Print is still powerful. There is a large part of India - 40 to 50 per cent - that is non-digital. Consumers largely watch television or read newspapers; it's not a 100 per cent digital country. We get our older audiences through the press, and younger audiences through digital."
THE ART
If there is one thing that has changed significantly with digitisation, it is the artwork itself. In the old days, a topical would be handpainted from scratch. Today, they are made digitally. "Since everything was handpainted earlier, the designs had to be kept simple. Now, there is a greater emphasis on detailing since these are digital prints," says Jayant Rane, the third and the oldest member of the team behind the campaign. Like Rahul and Manish, his memories too are filled with iconic moments - be it the time when he gave a demo of his illustration to a crew from London BBC or when MF Husain called to congratulate the team when he spotted an Amul hoarding on Hum Aapke Hain Koun in Kolkata. We ask him which subjects he prefers personally while drawing the topicals, and pat comes the reply, "Bollywood."
Over the years, the Amul girl has gained quite a reputation for being on top of her Bollywood game. In an interview in the book Amul's India 3.0, superstar Amitabh Bachchan admits to keeping copies of Amul posters in which he has been featured. When asked how the Amul girl has covered aspects of Bollywood over the years, film writer Jai Arjun Singh notes, "I think the language has become glossier in some ways, much like a lot of mainstream Hindi cinema today. They have also, in the information overload era, become more cognisant of the behind-the-scenes stories: the star rivalries, romances or publicity (for instance, Dilwale and Bajirao Mastani being released on the same day). Earlier, the ads were more centred on actual films."
Fifty years and 8,000 topicals later, the Amul campaign has built for itself a robust legacy, one that is cited as an example to many. "Even newspapers have picked our lines. For instance, they often use 'One Day Mataram' in headlines, which is our catchline," says Manish. Rahul, on the other hand, feels that despite tackling the larger issues and often having pointed commentary through its catchlines, the success of the campaign indicates that Indians can largely take a joke.
With a large part of conversation on Amul revolving around the campaign, one wonders if its popularity has been delinked from the brand. Hazra sums it up succinctly, "The Amul girl is an ambassador of her own brand. She isn't to Amul what Arnab Goswami may have been to Times Now. People don't buy Amul products because of her. She is Amul's favourite product."
anamika @khaleejtimes.com

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