Clever Communication

Communication is a process of transferring information from one entity to another. For an organization it is very necessary to communicate well in order to sustain in the highly competitive market.

We all know the Organization has a very high budget for an marketing departement who's job is to communicate with the consumers. According to one research a consumer approximetly comes against 6400 messages everyday and out of that he retains only 10 to 12 informatons. So to come in the list of that 12 the communication pattern should be absolutely innovative and creative.

Amul is one of the best example of it. In all major cities, the Amul hoarding is something of a landmark and almost always brings a smile to faces of viewers. While the magic is in the topical themes and the execution.


I read about the story behind the campaign – and its a shining example of client-agency relationship. The client never gets to see the creatives before they are released! The client gets to see the hoardings just like the man on the street after it is released. The legendary Verghese Kurien, ex-Chairman of GCMMF, decided ages ago that if the hoardings are to be topical and need changing frequently, the typical approval process is a hindranc. He trusted the agency to come up with creatives that capture the attention and the imagination of the country. In fact, the client does not even suggest the topics to the agency. It’s all left to the agency to figure out what might be of interest to the general public and come up with a suitable creative posts. Isn’t that wonderful?

According to the Amul website, the first of such ads was released in 1969, when Mumbai first saw the beginning of the Hare Rama Hare Krishna movement, Sylvester daCunha, Mohammad Khan and Usha Bandarkar, then the creative team working on the Amul account came up with a clincher — ‘Hurry Amul, Hurry Hurry’. Bombay reacted to the ad with a excitement that was almost as devout as the Iskon fever.

That was the first of the many topical ads that were in the offing. From then on Amul began playing the role of a social observer. Over the years the campaign acquired that all important Amul touch.

Some of the best posting of Amul are as follows:

A post after the movie Cheeni Kum of legedary Amitab Bacchan



Idea taken from the highly successful advertisment of Vodafone


Landslide victory of the Congress in the General Election - May '09


Proposal for 90% reservation for SSC students admisssion to colleges in Maharashra - June'09


Growing popularity of Facebook - July'09

Conveying message through all the events taking place in the country, Amul always had a reply to it. It is up to date with current affairs. The first escalator in Mumbai in 1979 was celebrated with a slogan ‘Automatically Amul’. When the city witnessed a power shortage, the Amul girl said ‘Ta ta power?, Amul, Unlimited Supply’. When the Mumbai police were dealing with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s sister Haseena Parkar in cases ranging from extortion to cheating and forgery in May this year, the hoarding simply said ‘Haseena Maan Jayegi?’ In the early ‘90s, when the colas were getting popular, the tongue-in-cheek remark was ‘Eat the Real Thing’. When the world feared a collapse on Y2K, Amul girl interpreted the phenomenon as ‘Yes to Khana’.

From the Sixties to the Nineties, the Amul ads have come a long way. While most people agree that the Amul ads were at their peak in the Eighties they still maintain that the Amul ads continue to tease a laughter out of them.

Where does Amul's magic actually lie? Many believe that the charm lies in the catchy lines. That we laugh because the humour is what anybody would enjoy. They don't pander to your nationality or certain sentiments. It is pure and simple, everyday fun.

The success story of Amul says one thing to all the other ad campaigns that did not manage to last too long or had to get a whole new look in order to stay in the market. Its a mixture of keeping with the times, humor and understanding the need of the hour of the people. Amul boardings are a thing of attractions in India.

Who are my competitors?

I as a business student had always been taught in the subject of marketing that in order to survive in the business we should fight against our competitors. We should predict there future strategy and act according to it. We should create a PoD (point of differentiation) to keep away the competitors for the longer time.
But, when I gave this a thought I came across to a very different thing. In order to fight with our competitors we must know who our competitors are. Then I asked myself a question can we find our competitors easily? The answer to this question I got is no. The first thought came to my mind was for the product ‘Video Conferencing’. I attend one insightful session through VC (Video Conferencing) and started thinking with whom it is competing and which are the industries which are getting affected by it. I surprisingly found that the highly effected industry was the Aviation industry. Organizations have started using the facility of the video conferencing through which they are cutting the cost of travelling of their higher level executives.
The next industry which I thought about was of music industry. It was very strange to know that the Airtel is enjoying the highest revenue in the field of music through its caller tunes facility. If we look at the sale of camera, Nokia in India sells the highest numbers of camera through its cell phones than the major players like Canon or Nikon. The organization manufacturing alarm watches became the sick units just with feature of Alarm given in the cell phone. The launch of the iPhone and other mp4 players had just removed the Walkman players of Sony and other major players. The rise on online social media has completely changed the scenario of the gaming industry. Social networking web-sites like hi5 has far more users than the one who purchase games from the physical form of market.
So, did anyone know that Airtel would be having the highest revenue in the field of music? Was Canon ready to fight with the inbuilt camera in the cell phones? Was the Alarm clock industry aware of the alarm feature in the cell phones? Was Sony able to predict that the company like Apple would come with the product like iPhone and change the whole scenario of music industry? Was the gaming industry were able to predict the threat of the rise of the online social networking?
If we give a rational thought to the above question the obvious answer would be no or it might be difficult to identify our competitors. So to survive in this continuously growing market we need to update ourselves every minute. Being a king of industry and ruling the market for the longer time is no more possible. Our competitors are everywhere and to sustain we need to take it as a challenge and come with more innovations.