Utterly butterly relevant: The madman Sylvester daCunha behind Amul girl

Brand pundits also agree that only a rare few ad campaigns can beat the creativity and topicality of the Amul Girl cartoons

It was the summer of 2000. A bunch of impressionable young schoolchildren in South Delhi had just been introduced to a not-so-impressive looking adman in his late fifties. He was the guest speaker at an art and drawing workshop designed for primary schoolkids in the middle of their vacation.

I was a part of the group and remember quite clearly how most of us had racked our brains wondering what an “adman” really meant and how he could teach us drawing. Our puerile minds latched on to an inevitable moniker — “madman” — that, I now realise, is quite common for people in his profession.

But our giggles and guffaws quickly subsided into awed silence when the workshop coordinator informed us this particular “madman” was also the brain behind one of our favourite “cartoon” characters, the Amul Girl.

In an interaction that lasted nearly an hour, Sylvester daCunha showed us what a consummate storyteller he was. We listened with rapt attention, as he told us stories about how he and Eustace Fernandes had come up with the look of the Amul Girl, and what went into fashioning a character who, as he had put it, “spoke once in a day and only in witty one-liners”.

Amid all the anecdotes about how the iconic mascot’s dress, hairstyle, age and gender were finalised, I remember one remark daCunha made about Amul’s daily one-panel cartoon ads: “We have always been clear about the ads. Amul is desh ka makkhan (the nation’s butter), and therefore the Amul Girl needs to speak to the desh. And the best way to connect with the nation is to speak about issues and topics that are on everyone’s mind right now.”

Somewhat ruefully, he added, “While I can in no way compare myself to the creative genius of R K Laxman or Shankar, I do imagine the Amul Girl playing a similar role to the Common Man and all those other one-panel political cartoons.”

The comparison drives home a crucial characteristic of the Amul ads. In an age when a deluge of memes and GIFs help add witty nuggets to our daily conversations on social media, and when the classical idea of the newspaper cartoon has lost much of its bite, the Amul Girl remains a refreshing throwback to old-fashioned sociopolitical wit and satire.

The butter-centric ad campaign launched in 1966 continues to address the nub of the hot-button issues and debates of the day and offer the Amul take in small, palatable bites. And it was the genius of “madman” daCunha that made him think of equating a modest milk product with the nation, not through boastful claims of its importance but by turning the ad into a space for national dialogue.

For daCunha, the Amul Girl-led ads also were all about simplicity. A girl with big eyes in a dress with red polka dots and matching ribbon in her hair and paired with red shoes, the mascot was brought to life by late illustrator and art director Eustace Fernandes, and designed to appeal to mothers and kids alike. Verghese Kurien, the late co-founder of Amul, and daCunha had both decided that a small girl child would work best for this purpose. The accompanying catchphrase — “utterly butterly delicious” — too was brief, catchy and to the point. It was daCunha’s wife Nisha who had coined it.

The art style was devoid of complexities as well. Drawn with clear-lined foreground characters and abstract water-coloured backgrounds, the cartoon window popped out in the newsprint. While drawn with simplified physical features, the eye for detail made each new character easily distinguishable. From Sachin Tendulkar to Narendra Modi and Kalpana Chawla to Deepika Padukone, the “Amul-fied” versions of popular icons were an instant hit for newspaper readers.

The cherry on the cake was surely the witticisms and turns of phrase. From “Sim(Pele) the best” to “Ferozshah Ghotala” and “TRAI a neutral approach”, the Amul cartoons tackled sports, politics, economics and current affairs with equal charm, ease and grace.

Brand pundits also agree that only a rare few ad campaigns can beat the creativity and topicality of Amul. Samit Sinha, founder and managing partner at Alchemist Brand Consulting, explains, “The adorable Amul Girl, the clever (and occasionally cringe-worthy) wordplay, and its mostly on-the-button references to topical events may have even subconsciously influenced me to try to make a career in advertising.” While admitting that the industry has changed beyond recognition and that there have been many examples of memorable advertising since then, Sinha nonetheless points out that “somehow the Amul campaign that has to remain unchanged for nearly six decades has lost none of its original utterly-butterly charms even today”.

At the workshop in 2000, daCunha ended his interaction by emphasising that “brands are in fact all about the stories you tell, and how you tell them”. He told us that ads were never about the butter, but how consumers interpreted, or imagined, the idea of an “utterly butterly” product.

“The man lives on through his creation,” says brand guru Harish Bijoor. “Sylvester DaCunha is no more. At the same time, he can never ever leave till the Amul Girl is around in our daily lives. He created an icon! He will live on till we see the Amul Girl.”