Amul unveils coffee table book to celebrate 50 years of iconic billboards!

If you have enjoyed the witty one-liners on Amul butter billboards, here is another way to enjoy fifty years of legendary slogans. To commemorate half a century of the brand’s much-awaited humorous billboards, Amul today launched a coffee table book in partnership titled Amul’s India’, published by Collins Business, part of HarperCollins publishers, in a joint venture with the India Today Group. Launched at NCPA’s Little Theatre in Mumbai, the book also includes articles written by Amitabh Bachchan, Saurav Ganguly, Harsha Bhogle, Shobhaa De and social commentator Santosh Desai, among others. The sleek and collectible coffee table book will be available at all leading book stores across India.

 

Voted the ‘Most Trusted brand in the Food and Beverages’ sector in ‘The Brand Trust Report 2011’, Amul kick started its brand building operations way back in the year 1966 with Sylvester daCunha, then Managing Director of the advertising agency, Advertising and Sales Promotion (ASP) to design a new campaign for Amul Butter. The campaign was widely popular and earned a Guinness world record for the longest running ad campaign in the world.

 

Since 1967, Amul products' mascot has been the very recognisable ‘Amul baby’ or Amul girl (a chubby butter girl usually dressed in a polka dotted dress), created by Eustace Fernandes and Sylvester daCunha, showing up on hoardings and product wrappers with the equally recognizable tagline ‘Utterly, Butterly Delicious Amul’. This was a revolution in the advertising space as it reversed the trend of using celebrities in advertisement campaigns. 

 

“The Amul brand has become iconic due to its advertising campaigns, primarily on hoardings, in the last five decades. Hence, we thought of bringing out this book which not only has compilation of 200+ evergreen topical ads but also commentary on the same from leading celebrities, authors, ad men and like to give the readers a unique perspective – both as a medium and the message,” said RS Sodhi, Managing Director, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (Amul).

 

“The Amul ads have been ‘live’ and still bring smiles to people’s faces. We wanted to create a ‘living’ collection – which pushed the reader to engage and analyse rather than ‘collect’. The idea was to invite writers, social commentators, ad men and of course, the ‘victims’ of the hoardings themselves – to bring forth their unique viewpoint. Harsha Bhogale has written about cricket and the Amul hoardings, Santosh Desai on a changing India and Amitabh Bachchan on his personal recollection of being an Amul subject,” said Alpana Parida, President, DY Works, the brand design company that designed the book.

 

A quote from the book sums it all up: “This book portrays how the endearing moppet and her tongue-in-cheek humour helped a milk producers’ co-operative create a ‘White Revolution’… it is a chronicle of India through the eyes of the Amul Girl.” Truly and most deservingly, hats off to Amul - The Taste of India.

 

Amul’s India (Harper Collins India, Rs 299) was launched on June 11 at NCPA’s Little Theatre in Mumbai. There will be a panel discussion on the book at India International Centre, New Delhi, on June 13.