Amul girl refers to the advertising mascot used by Amul, an Indian dairy brand. The Amul girl is a hand-drawn cartoon of a young Indian girl dressed in a polka dotted frock with blue hair and a half pony tied up. The Amul girl advertising has often been described as one of the best Indian Advertising concepts because of its humour.
Origin
The Amul girl was created as a response to Amul's rival brand Polson's butter-girl. The idea was conceived in 1967 once ASP clinched the brand portfolio from the previous agency FCB Ulka. It was executed by Mr. Sylvester Da Cunha, the owner of the agency and his art director Eustace Fernandes on hoardings, painted bus panels and posters in Mumbai. The mascot, since then, has been mobilized to comment on many events of national and political importance like the Emergency in India in 1976.
Development
In 1966, Amul decided to give their account to the advertising agency called Advertising and Sales Promotion to work on their ad campaign. Sylvester da Cunha, the then managing director of the agency and Eustace Fernandez, art director decided to create something that would grab the attention of every housewife in the country. Dr Verghese Kurien, then chairman of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. suggested a mischievous little girl as a mascot with two requirements. It had to be easy to draw and memorable as most of the advertising would be outdoor media which required hand painting in those days and the hoardings had to be changed frequently.
In 2001, Amul ran an ad campaign criticizing the Indian Airlines strike; the latter threatened to stop offering Amul butter on their flights unless the ads were pulled. Another ad during Ganesh Chaturthi which said, Ganpati Bappa More Ghya. The Shiv Sena party said that if the ad wasn't removed, they would come and destroy Amul's office. In July 2011, an ad criticizing Suresh Kalmadi led to trouble in Pune, while an ad poking fun at Mamata Banerjee in December 2011 led to problems in Kolkata. Subsequently, another ad with Banerjee was released all over India except in Kolkata in March 2012. In 2011, when they came up with ‘Maine kyaa khaya' for Suresh Kalmadi over the 2010 Commonwealth Games scam, they ran into trouble. “He was found guilty, he was in jail, his party had abandoned him. But party workers in Pune actually pulled down the hoarding,” recalls a bewildered da Cunha. There have been some laughable protests as well. When they wrote ‘Satyam Sharam Scandalum!' for Satyam Computer Services Ltd.'s disgraced chairman Ramalinga Raju, he says, “We got a formal letter from the Satyam Board threatening us with dire consequences: all their employees would stop eating Amul butter!”.
