Point of View

In the 1970s, the upstart Nirma, with a lower price tag and a catchy television commercial, caught the public attention. Though they had different price points, Nirma began to gro…

The mid-90s were the early days for mobile telephony in India. Everybody who was somebody was trying to get a piece of the pie. Ericsson was one of them, and Nexus Equity was thei…

In the late 70s, if you visited a cinema, chances are you would have seen Sunil Gavaskar driving the ball exquisitely in a Palmolive commercial, and with every drive, it was shown…

Nycil, the talcum powder was handled by many agencies before it reached the doorstep of Sista in the early 70s. There were no consistent and good creatives until then. Nycil w…

In the 80s, Photophone Industries launched a simple, uncomplicated colour camera that promoted colour over the predominant black and white. (Btw cameras could use b/w and colour r…

The regular saree was boring for many women in the late 70s. Women were changing. While they wanted to wear sarees, the product was staid and boring. The stiff cotton material of …

With a loan of Rs 80, seven Gujarati ladies started Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad. To grow their business, they wanted to advertise with a shoestring budget, far away from …

Circa 1976. Britannia Glucose-D was a biscuit targeted at children. Parle G was the go-to brand then and when customers asked for glucose biscuits, Parle G was the preferred choic…

Till recently, Nerolac was FCB Ulka’s oldest client. In fact, the Goody Tiger logo (discontinued a few years back) was tweaked to suit the brand by Subhash Tendle, an art director…

Godfrey Philips (a Philip Morris partner) launched Four Square cigarettes in 1961 in India.The brand was pottering along when GPI decided to revitalize the brand. In 1977, Lintas …

When the signal from a radio station was good, two curtains in the magic eye of the radio would converge.  The radio – Murphy.  A wooden box, an embroidered cloth …

Cigarette companies in India were rigid and conservative, and they thought they knew it (all) --the pack must be like this, the crest must be like that, and so on.  Vazir …

Hero Honda introduced a 4-stroke motorcycle badged CD100 in the mid-1980s. It had a class-leading mileage of 80 km/l, unheard of at the time. The brief was to make motorbikes, …

The 1996 Cricket World Cup was a proxy to celebrate the liberalized India - a battleground for the cola MNCs that had come in. A lot was at stake.  Pepsi had lost its bid …