Point of View

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 …

In 1980, the sales of Cherry Blossom, the shoe polish from Reckitt & Colman (now Reckitt Benckiser), were plateauing. With over 80% market share, it was the leader and there w…

Over 60 years ago, the Zodiac brand name was created by MY Noorani and Hasan Taj of Lintas over a cup of tea at an Irani restaurant. Hathaway Shirts in the US had used an uncon…

ITC's Wills (Navy Cut) introduced a taste-enhancing filter in 1965, which marked a huge change in product development. Filter-tip cigarettes were designed to be safer as a reactio…

Vadilal began as a soda firm in 1907 and grew to become Gujarat's most popular ice cream brand in the 1970s. When they intended to expand to Mumbai in the 1980s, they ran into a p…