New Delhi: Would an Amul boy outwit the cute girl in polka dotted dress and with a blue hair bun? Never, say her creators.
The Amul girl is far cuter than an Amul boy. She has far greater appeal, says Rahul DaCunha, Managing Director and Creative Head, DaCunha Communications, the advertising agency behind the popular hoardings.
We are 50 years young!!, that's what the hoarding for the Amul girl at 50 be like.
The success of Amul is no accident. It was Dr Kurien's understanding of how brands work, of the importance of building brands, of the focus on quality, value for money and customer centricity as a bedrock of all that Amul did, which has made Amul the behemoth that it is.
Consider these pearls of wisdom from Dr Kurien culled from speeches that he made as chairman of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation over the years.
For the Consumer,Amulsimply means 'Value For Money' and Quality as it should be. Our brand name touches an emotional chord with her:Amulmeans a range of superior products, consumed by every age group, and a favourite in every part of our diverse land.Amulmakes each bite that much more special because in our humble way, we care for feelings that are truly Indian.
And a few years later...
In the thick of the retail FDI debate, General VK Singh made a statement that went by largely unnoticed. Pitching Amul model against FDI in retail, he said the former is an excellent model to empower farmers.
The statement warrants a closer study of the Amul model for more reasons than one.
First and foremost, it seeks to compare the co-operative model with the corporate-run, contract farming model.
Amul is a network of 31 lakh dairy farmers, who are members of more than 15,000 village co-operatives. Milk producers sell their produce to village co-operatives, which is affiliated to district milk co-operative union and then in turn to the state level milk marketing federation. The model essentially helped farmers to end the strangle hold of the middlemen.
Ahmedabad: Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), marketing its dairy products under brand 'Amul', today said it would begin manufacturing few of its dairy products in the US over the next 6-8 months.
The move is being viewed as a dry run for the Indian co-operative sector dairy giant to set up its own
manufacturing facility in the US at a later stage.
Amul (Kaira) District Cooperative Milk Producers Union (ADCMPU), through a third party agreement with an
existing manufacturing plant owner having a plant near New Jersy in the US, will begin producing few dairy products there, GCMMF Managing Director R S Sodhi said.
When we think of Amul, we think of milk.
Yet, if you pause and think, there's so much more to Amul than just milk.
Indeed, for people like me who were living (then) in a place like Kolkata or Chennai, Amul was not milk at all. It was so much more. Amul was the butter we spread on the toast every morning, Amul was the cheese we had once in a while as a special treat, and Amul was the metal container of powdered baby food you saw in the kitchen.
Amul, later, became the chocolate you shared, breaking up the bar into as many pieces as there were people around. After all, Amul Chocolate was 'A gift for someone you love'.
Years later, Amul was an ice-cream, Amul was among the first foods you saw in a Tetrapak, Amul was cheese powder, and Amul was shrikhand.
Amul, by now, was the Taste of India.
From the time you stopped breast feeding, there was at least one Amul product you consumed every day. Walk around the kitchen, open the fridge, and count the number of Amul products you have in your house.
Think of when you consumed an Amul product last. For me, it was an hour ago, when I buttered a couple of slices of toast.
How many multi-product marketing organisations can make a similar claim?
And these achievements by a cooperative society, not a multinational, not a government funded navratna, not even an organisation owned by a big Indian industrialist.
And how big was it? Huge.
To give you an idea, here are some wonderful reference points (thanks to Anand Halve; all data from his book Darwin's Brands - Adapting for success).
Amul's turnover in 2009-10: Rs 80,054 million
Nestle India (calendar year 2009: Rs. 48,008 million
Britannia Industries (2009-10): Rs. 34,246 million
Dr Verghese Kurien, the father of the White Revolution in India and the founder of Amul passed away on Sunday at Nadiad in Gujarat after a brief period of illness. He was 90.
A Padma Vibhushan awardee, Verghese Kurien was the masterbrain behind making India the largest milk producer in the world. He was also the recipient of the World Food Prize and the Magsaysay Award.
Kurien was the architect of Operation Flood - the largest dairy development program in the world. He helped modernise the Anand model of cooperative dairy development.
