Utterly Butterly Delicious: The Profitable Saga of the Amul Girl

The moment we hear these three words - Utterly Butterly Delicious, not just the tone starts playing in our minds, but we instantly connect to that cute little girl wearing a polka-dotted frock and in a half-pony. The Amul girl advertising has been regarded as one of the best Indian advertising concepts, courtesy of its humour. The Indians got to meet this cute little girl in 1968. Since then, she has had a stable relationship with generations altogether. Whether it is about fuel prices, Bollywood, cricket or politics, the Amul Girl has a word to share every time. With this post, let’s have a glance at the entire journey of this mascot.

Where does the Amul girl originate from?

The Amul Girl came to life as a response to Polson’s butter-girl, a direct competitor of Amul. This idea was conceived back in 1967, just after Advertising, Sales and Promotion (ASP) took the brand Portfolio from the last agency FCB Ulka.

The first hoarding of the Amul Girl in 1966:

The man behind this idea was Sylvester da Cunha - the agency’s owner - and Eustace Fernandes - the art director. Their goal was to come up with something that would grab the attention of Indian housewives. Then chairman of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF) put forth the idea of creating a mischievous little girl.

But there were two requirements: It should be memorable and easy to draw. This was because, in those days, hand-painting was done, and most of the advertising was outdoor media. Thereafter, the Amul girl went on hoardings, bus panels and posters in Mumbai. Since then, the mascot has been commenting on several national and political events.

Controversies of the Amul girl

All these years, despite being loved incredibly, Amul Girl has faced a gamut of controversies as well. Back in 2001, an ad campaign criticised the Indian Airlines strike. This resulted in Indian Airlines threatening to stop providing Amul butter on their flights unless the ad was taken down. There was another ad published on Ganesh Chaturthi that read “Ganpati Bappa More Ghya” meaning Ganpati Bappa take more. The Shiv Sena party had stepped in and demanded to remove the ad, or they would destroy the office of the company.

The most famous Amul girl Ads throughout the years

It will be a rare scenario to find someone who wouldn’t be familiar with the brand Amul and its girl mascot. Since the establishment of Amul Girl, the brand has been praised thoroughly for its advertisements. Here are some of the most popular Amul Girl ads from all those years.

In 2008, ISRO launched Chandrayaan I - a lunar probe. It was the maiden lunar mission of India, and it offered much required boost to the ISRO

When Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., passed away

In 2017, the SC brought a historic verdict where it deemed Triple Talaaq to be unconstitutional

In 2018, the special status of Jammu and Kashmir was revoked by the SC

In 2019, Indian wing commander Abhinandan Varthamaan was caught in Pakistan during a standoff. He was held captive for 60 hours

When the Taj Got Reopened After the Mumbai Terror Attacks

Amul’s secret in advertising

What’s astounding to know is that the success of this brand in business and advertising comes with less than 1% of revenue expenditure. In fact, the 5-year average ad expense of Amul is merely 0.8% of the revenue.

How is Amul doing this?

Family branding is the secret sauce of Amul.

The company doesn’t spend anything separately to create a brand from every product. But, it concentrates on building an umbrella brand for Amul. As far as advertising is concerned, this methodology is known as family branding or umbrella branding. As a brand, Amul is associated with the “Taste of India.” Thus, customers identify each product coming from the company. One of the primary benefits of umbrella branding is that you don’t need to park a separate budget for every product available in the portfolio. This way, naturally, your expenditure will come down.

However, this approach only works when your products are related to one another and you work with same principles for all products. The core principle of Amul is to provide quality at an affordable price, which is maintained in every product of the company. Thus, umbrella branding completely makes sense for the brand.

Is Amul’s family branding approach effective?

Let’s have a look at some numbers to figure out the effectiveness of Amul’s advertising. Here, let’s take an example of Amul Butter, which is one of the popular and oldest products of the brand.

Advertising expense of Amul butter

Amul Butter has more than 85% of the share in the Indian butter segment and is the leader in the Market.

• The market size of butter in India is Rs. 5400 crores. Thus, the Amul Butter revenue would be Rs. 5400 x 85% = Rs. 4590 crores.

• The total revenue of the brand is Rs. 61,000 crores. Thus, the Amul Butter revenue is = 4590 / 61,000 x 100 = ~8%.

• Amul generally spends ~1% of its revenue on its ads. Thus, the advertising spend will be = Rs. 61,000 crores x 1% = Rs. 610 crores.

• Since Amul Butter brings 8% revenue for the brand, let’s assume that the advertising expense for Amul Butter is 7% as well.

This way, the advertising expense of Amul Butter = Rs. 610 crores x 8% = Rs. 48.8 crores.

Advertising expense for household or Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by Amul butter

Let’s guess how many households this product is reaching with an advertising expense of Rs. 48.8 crores.

• Let’s assume every household is using four 100g packs of Amul Butter a month. This way, in a year, they will be using 12 x 4 = 48 packs.

• So, a household spends 48 packs x Rs. 50 = Rs. 2400 on Amul Butter in a year.

• Next, the number of houses buying Amul Butter = Amul Butter Revenue / Average expense of each household on the product = Rs. 4590 crores / Rs. 2400 = ~2 crore households.

Lastly, the amount put on advertising by Amul Butter for each household or CAC = Advertising spend / Number of households buying Amul Butter = Rs. 48.8 crores / 2 crore households = ~Rs. 24.

Now, Rs. 24 is a great number as far as customer acquisition is concerned.

Wrapping Up

Undoubtedly, Amul has aced advertising throughout the years and has become one of the iconic brands in the market. There will hardly be an Indian who wouldn’t have seen the Amul girl campaigns. The brand promotes purity and quality. So far, it has managed to create an emotional connection with Indian customers. It will surely take several years for any other brand to reach the level of Amul.