Lounge Opinion: Why it’s time for the Amul girl to take a bow
The death of wit in the Amul ads
When I was a child in the 1980s, one of my few toys was a wooden red-turbanned man with a proud moustache, hands folded in greeting. Soon, parts of this toy started to chip away, but I loved it anyway.
That, if you haven’t guessed it already, was the Maharajah that made Air India a recognizable name even among children our age. When the airline decided to bid him goodbye, it was a sad day, much l ike the time my mother decided to trash its wooden clone. But at least the Maharajah didn’t live to see the day when this girl, all grown-up, would perhaps decide that he was too fuddy-duddy for her. He remained a perfectly happy memory, fit for nostalgia.
As likeable as the Maharajah is another iconic advertising mascot, the Amul girl. Unchanged for decades, this cheerful, round-faced girl in a red polka-dot dress and a high ponytail tied with a Minnie Mouse bow is young enough to allow for the kind of wordplay that this advertising is all about. For nearly 50 years, the ad agency daCunha Communications has found new rhyming words and puns, of a level that should please only a primary school kid, to display on billboards across the country.
Take, for instance, this take on cricketer Virat Kohli’s non-performance during the Test series in England in 2014: KOHLi-PEELi ANUSHKA KO BLAME MAT KARO, a reference to his girlfriend, followed by the tag line, Amul Distracts You. A couple of questions for the copywriter: One, is there a meaning to the small “i" that we missed? Two, by adding “Amul Distracts You", didn’t you—unintentionally, of course—condone the Anushka Sharma blame-game?
Then, when Union minister Smriti Irani discovered a camera trained towards a trial room in a Fabindia outlet, Amul eerily hummed: Hum tum ek camera mein bandh ho? Fab Indian butter! Kind of missed the point there, Amul, by using a song that evokes young love to focus on something as dirty as voyeurism.
One can just imagine the creative heads as they try to cover current events in the country. Take the AIB Roast week. Now think, what rhymes with roast? Toast? Good, good, always good with butter, but overdone now. Dost? Hey—and here comes the eureka moment—let’s stretch that to dosti. We could mix ’n match with Sholay, two for the price of one, eh guys? The winner: “Yeh Roasti Hum Nahin Todenge!" Never mind if it doesn’t mean anything, people will get it, yaar!
The weekly episode has started to show it up for what it is most of the time: not funny, not witty, a damp squib. And when Amul decided to milk the Nepal tragedy with “ Hum pal, pal, Nepal ke saath hai …" to sell its butter, it just left a bad taste in the mouth.
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