Amul, Delhi Fun
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
~Mark Twain
I’ve been meaning to post on this for a while. Amul 
is a huge dairy cooperative in India (HUGE!), owned by 2.4 million milk producers in Gujarat. It’s one of the most long-term successful cooperatives world-wide, and is often referenced in the development world as being so. It started in 1946 and spurred India’s so-called “White Revolution,” which has made India the largest producer of milk and milk products in the world. This is an oft-referenced source of pride for Indians (I hear it all the time, especially at public functions). I wondered, if not India, who would be the largest producer of milk products? The only reasonable competition (population-wise) would be from China, but the Chinese don’t use much milk or milk products in their diet. So naturally India would be number one. The US has less than 1/3rd the population of India, but it turns out the US is now only slightly behind India in production, and it actually goes back and forth every year as to who is number one.
Anyway, this is all irrelevant, as I want to talk about marketing. But - here’s my vegan disclaimer (I am a vegan, or have been attempting to be one atleast for the past several years) - MILK AND MILK PRODUCTS ARE BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, FOR YOU, FOR THE ANIMALS, etc. There is some more information about the environment in particular on my Interesting Stuff page, and if you want information on the other stuff leave me a comment or do a google search.
Anyway, Amul is absolutely great at marketing. One of my favorite things to do every week is check the Amul billboard which comes out on Friday. Here’s one from a month ago when I was in Bombay, and Sanjaya was a semifinal in American Idol (No, I don’t watch American Idol or find it entertaining):
Since the 60’s, Amul has been putting out hilarious tongue-in-cheek sketches starring the Amul baby commenting jovially on the latest news or current events. They usually have some pun involving Amul and the loveable Amul baby and her friends. The Amul ads are one of the longest running ads based on the same theme… I’ve read that they are going to be entered into the Guinness book as the longest running ads based on the same theme. I would’ve thought Absolut would win there, but it turns out that campaign only started in 1980.
I don’t follow Indian news as much as I should, but I always know the top story of the week when I see the Amul ads. It’s an amazing timely slice of Indian culture at that time.
Here are some of my favorite recent ones:
This is from when the Bollywood movie Dhoom: 2 came out, which featured a bunch of the leading stars of India (and had the same font):
From when Shakira came to India to perform in Bombay:
When the SENSEX (Bombay Stock Exchange) plummetted last May:
I spent some time in Delhi last week, working with the folks at Drishtee. I had a great time, and met up with a bunch of other folks in the development space, doing very different things from me.
Picture-based overview of my non-work time in Delhi:
Getting driven all around Delhi in Andrew’s scooter. Andrew is the person I’m in contact with most often from a work perspective for Drishtee, and this time I was there over the weekend, so I got to meet up with some of Andrew’s friends, and was surprised to note that me and Andrew’s friends had many other friends in common, so it was one big happy family of people in the development sector. At times we were on the scooter for more than an hour at a time. At other times, we had as many as 4 people on the scooter at the same time (sorry, no pictures of that).
Andrew is brilliant at taking a picture and being in it at the same time:
Playing frisbee. This would seem to be picture worthy, except that if you look closely, we have a mix of several different races and most of the people are white. Also, we’re playing on a neatly manicured lawn with big trees and sidewalk-lamps. It looks a lot like America. It could be Schenley Park, where I occasionally tossed the frisbee during college. But it’s Nehru Park, in the heart of New Delhi, and these are mostly expats doing some sort of development work in India. There are a bunch of them in Delhi, and thanks to Andrew, I got to meet several.
Here is the one big happy family of people (most of whom I’d known for less than 24 hours) in the development sector… we had a great time:
