We tried. Word play. Smart-ass ad-lib. Even some Hinglish was thrown it. Egg on face. Or, dare we say butter? Mission aborted.u00a0One blamed this lame attempt at creating a catchy headline, to the subject of our story. After all, we were attempting to unravel the success behind the Amul Butter billboards. <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2012/may/Kolka.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 249px; " /> This hoarding reflected the outrage over Mamata Banerjee&rsquo;s cartoon Since 1966, these simplistic messages have grabbed the psyche of a nation &mdash; laced with the wit, peppered with a dash of humour and subtle reflection. What&rsquo;s the catch? We ask Rahul daCunha, Managing Director and Creative Head, daCunha Communications, the ad agency that creates the Amul outdoor billboards. &ldquo;Our guiding principle is that we don&rsquo;t get malicious with our messages. But, we are getting touchy as a nation.&rdquo; Rahul cites the recent outrage over Mamata Banerjee&rsquo;s cartoons and the uproar in Parliament as examples. <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2012/may/1-Bom-bye.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 238px; " /> This hoarding was created in 1995 to signal the change in the city&rsquo;s name, it&rsquo;s one of Rahul&rsquo;s favourites &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have worried about these things earlier. Navigating all of this is tricky business now. I still believe that we have freedom of expression. Our messages try to mirror what the Indian is thinking and feeling, and we go with that emotion.&rdquo; So many Indias Few might be aware that the creatives for Amul hoardings are made, region-wise: &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve discovered that there are four different Indias &mdash; Mumbai, South, East (including North-east) and the Hindi belt (Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Delhi). Our city is an island, literally; often, we create Mumbai-specific hoardings!&rdquo; <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2012/may/1-Vicky.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 249px; " /> Riding on the wave of the surprise hit, Vicky Donor, this message hit bull&rsquo;s eye He adds that messages for the Hindi belt are political since it is the hotbed for socio-political action while in the East, &ldquo;subjects include Saurav (Ganguly), Durga Puja and football.&rdquo; Rahul believes that the South is a complete contrast &mdash; &ldquo;they don&rsquo;t speak Hindi and don&rsquo;t follow Bollywood too much. Rajnikanth and politics are huge, with Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi as the key players.&rdquo; He believes that there are few national interests left &mdash; &ldquo;unless it&rsquo;s a huge political impact, or with events like the IPL or a petrol hike. As India gets older, it&rsquo;s become more localised. The common man is concerned about dug-up roads outside his home, not political dramas in Delhi. We must satisfy them.&rdquo; <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2012/may/1-Kha.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 244px; " /> The Anna Hazare hoarding was a big hit Such regional detailing requires layers of customisation, which is where Manish Jhaveri enters the frame. The award-winning copywriter has been writing the Amul hoardings since 1994: &ldquo;It came a full circle when I joined daCunha Communications. I&rsquo;d follow these hoardings closely as a collegian. My humour was akin to the brand. Things fell into place.&rdquo; Both Rahul and Manish maintain that English works in urban India while Hindi and Hinglish get the nod in the hinterland. &ldquo;Hinglish is acceptable these days because Mumbai and Bollywood have helped percolate this unique mix to all corners,&rdquo; Manish reveals. Rahul admits that often, Hindi words work better than English lines. <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2012/may/1phekta-tha-ab-bhi-phekta-h.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 247px; " /> This hoarding received as many as 3,500 likes on Facebook when this book went into print The making of the message &ldquo;If a hoarding needs to go up by 1pm on a Wednesday, there have been occasions when Manish and I plumb on a topic by 9 am, on the same day. Our illustrator Jayant Rane does his part and in three hours, we&rsquo;re on!&rdquo; he tells us matter-of-factly. &ldquo;When a system has worked for 19 years, it&rsquo;s possible to pre-empt the language.&rdquo; Manish maintains that a certain quality and consistency enters the mindset: &ldquo;Every hoarding might not be a super hit but there&rsquo;s an in-built quality control, there&rsquo;s a strong gut feel.&rdquo; <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2012/may/amul.jpg" style="border-width: 3px; border-style: solid; width: 500px; height: 660px; " /> Amul&rsquo;s India, daCunha Communications andu00a0DY Works, Collins Business, an imprint of HarperCollins India,u00a0' 299. Available at leading bookstores. Rahul echoes his view, &ldquo;Manish, Jayant and I are like a well-oiled unit; we know each other&rsquo;s minds. What has helped is the shift from hand-painted to vinyl hoardings. Previously, we were dependent on painters to capture the mood; now we can create details, include backgrounds and vignettes.&rdquo; The third element in this trinity, Jayant Rane has been creating the Amul girl for 25 years. &ldquo;Rahul sir has to like the illustration, bas&hellip;&rdquo; he explains in Hinglish. &ldquo;Because of vinyl hoardings, the finishing must be perfect; things were different earlier with handwork artists. &rdquo; When we prod him, the unassuming illustrator admits, &ldquo;haan, people look forward to our hoardings; there is a lot of interest about what will appear next. Roz exam clear karna padta hai!&rdquo; he chuckles. Rahul also believes that the team&rsquo;s research canvas has broadened manifold: &ldquo;we need to be in the know. It is multi-layered thinking. We must understand mythology, popular culture, Bollywood, television and sport.&rdquo; Next year, Rahul completes 20 years of working on the Amul hoardings: &ldquo;The greatness of the last few years has been the impact of Facebook and Twitter. It&rsquo;s a fantastic medium to sense the nation&rsquo;s pulse, in quick time. Based on the recent Chelsea win, we carried a hoarding that saluted Didier Drogba (Drogba, you Didier best). We ran it in the East, in Kerala and Goa. Yet, it received the maximum likes on Facebook, in a year. I was excited that a sport like football caused such hype. Was it a new trend that was emerging, I wondered...&rdquo; The Amul girl &ldquo;I remember asking dad (Sylvester daCunha, chairman daCunha Communications and co-creator of Amul hoardings) about the Amul girl&rsquo;s age, he said, &ldquo;she must be 6-7 years old.&rdquo; She can get younger or older, depending on the theme. She can be Sonia Gandhi or Mallika Sherawat &mdash; she is a chameleon who transforms all the time,&rdquo; Rahul explains. But what do we make of her after all these years? Manish Jhaveri, throws light on our little star &mdash; &ldquo;she doesn&rsquo;t allow injustice and stands for a cause. She is an activist, a bit of a feminist and an observer; she doesn&rsquo;t laugh at someone but chooses to laugh with someone. She wants a better, butter India!&rdquo;u00a0 Did you know? Every Wednesday, Amul messages are printed in 25 publications across India. Eustace Fernandes was the first illustrator to create the Amul girl. &lsquo;Give us this day our daily bread: With Amul Butter&rsquo; was the very first Amul display.

For five decades, a fringed, wide-eyed moppet in a dotted frock on hoardings has captured the pulse and emotion of over a million folk across the country. Fiona Fernandez attempts to spread out the success story behind the Amul girl's love affair with India

Raise a toast to the real Miss India

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Raise a toast to the real Miss India

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