An interesting look into the delightful world of advertising
Bharat Dabholkar
Bharat Dabholkar is a man of many titles—among them, writer, director, actor, theatre personality and the brain behind the legendary Amul Butter advertising campaign. The sum of his unique traits and varied interests made him a name to reckon with; his talent and contribution to various fields has won him several national and international awards.
Rtn. Nanik Rupani, from our Club, was introduced to Dabholkar by Bala Saheb Thackeray; they immediately hit it off and became fast friends. Rtn. Nanik and President Rtn. Shailesh Haribhakti invited him to the Club’s weekly meeting and, while Dabholkar thanked the Club for inviting him, he confessed that he was an “extremely nervous speaker”. But for Rotarians, to have a man with such a vast array of experience behind him in their midst itself was a matter of pride; at last week’s meeting they were eager to hear what the ad man had to say on advertising.Dabholkar began by explaining the concept of a ‘target group’ and the most misunderstood subject in advertising – creativity. “After spending more than 25 years in advertising, the concept of target group gets drilled into our heads; target group means you must know who you are talking to. And then there is creativity, which I believe is the most misunderstood subject in advertising. People keep asking me ‘why make such a big fuss about creativity? Advertising is a simple job: you have a product to sell, you announce the details and it is sold.’ Earlier, advertising may have been just about that; things have changed now,” he said.
He took the example of shampoos in the market – earlier, if you wanted to wash your hair, you’d go to a shop and buy a shampoo. Today, if you go to a shop you will find that you don’t get normal shampoos anymore; you get shampoos for oily hair, extra oily hair, dry hair, and extra dry hair with dandruff. “And you are standing in a shop, wondering what you have got? You worry so much that your hair starts falling anyway. In fact, talking of shampoos, they are full of lime, lemon, vitamins, fruits and I honestly feel they are so healthy that you should drink them instead of putting them on your head,” he joked evoking laughter from the audience.
It is a known fact that advertising differentiates between products that are similarly priced and packed; advertising blind tests have been held many a time to prove the same. “In an international blind test, 75% of the people, who participated in the test, could not tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. The only thing that gives an image to a product you want to buy is advertising,” Dabholkar stressed. He then moved to the crux of his speech and showed Rotarians samples of how advertisers have used humour in advertising at the international level – some of them even scandalous! In advertising, he said, it is important to think out of the box. “It does not appeal to your head; instead, it appeals to your heart. If you can have an emotional connect with your audience then advertising always works,” Dabholkar explained.
In his book, Confessions of an advertising man, David Ogilvy said that when people are travelling in a car and see hoardings around them, they are not interested in looking at them; they are busy, thinking or worrying about something. Dabholkar said, “No one is keen on looking, unless you create a ‘visual scandal’—something that forces people to look up and read.”
Clever use of words makes an ordinary ad or a product look interesting. Dabholkar recalled an incident, where Dr. P S Pasricha, the former Deputy Commissioner of Mumbai traffic police, came to his office for a campaign. “People in Mumbai were spitting and urinating on walls; some buildings and societies were putting pictures of deities on their walls. But we couldn’t have the whole city covered like that and neither could we afford having a major chunk of our police force patrolling the city to catch someone urinating in public spaces. I said let’s do something that will make them feel embarrassed. We came up with an advertisement that said, ‘yeh gadhon ke peshab karne ki jagah hai’,” he said. We see advertisements for Range Rovers and Safaris, and all they keep talking about is how they can take up the rough roads, rivers and mountains. Dabholkar showed an advertisement where all the ad said was: ‘You can drive it as if it was your brother-in-law’s’. “If it’s your own car you are careful and if there is a ditch, you will drive slowly. But if it’s your brother-in-law’s car, you don’t give a damn. So this appeals to what a man genuinely feels from inside; such ads prove that you don’t need copy-heavy advertisements. Just the connect is enough,” he explained.
He showed Rotarians another advertisement by Orion binoculars where there were just three pictures and no copy. The first picture showed the moon and said, “200 Zoom”; the second one said, “400 Zoom” and showed the American flag on the moon. The last one said, “800 Zoom – Made in China”. So it says with Orion binoculars, you could see the moon and read “Made in China”.
While he supports the clever use of copy, Dabholkar is more careful when it comes to usage of images. “I feel that if I have to show a half-nude woman to sell my product then it means that I have no creativity in my mind. Even a local paanwala can put up the poster of a girl in a bikini and attract people to his shop. And I’m not saying this because I am a supporter of women’s causes. I don’t appreciate it because advertising is more than just using images for attention,” he opined.
Everyone wants to know the secret behind the success of the Amul Butter campaign, for which no subject is taboo. The hoardings have been popular for their tongue-in-cheek take on the country’s affairs. “The credit doesn’t go to the one who writes those lines. You can find many creative people writing those lines. The credit goes to a man called Dr. Kurien – the world’s best client. He called us and said that out of 4,000 agencies he chose our agency. He said he understood nothing in advertising and didn’t want to see what we do. The reason Amul Butter could be topical was because there was no client to go to show it to. We had a lot of fun doing Amul,” Dabholkar said with a smile.
He recalled a hoarding where Lord Ganesha had a slice of bread in his hand and the Amul girl had a slab of butter on the plate. The copy read “Ganpati Bappa More Ghya”. He said, “I got a twenty-five page letter from a lawyer in Mumbai. He said that while he was a regular consumer of Amul Butter, his religious sentiments were hurt by the latest hoarding; because you cannot show our Hindu God holding a slice of bread in his hand and that it was blasphemous. I wrote back to him saying, ‘Thank you for your letter. It was not meant to hurt your feelings; Ganpati is a fun God. Ram is always in that one pose and so is Krishna. Ganpati is a cricketer; he is a film star, plays the tambora and veena. But if it has hurt your feelings, I give you my personal assurance that it won’t be repeated.’” They got him back by doing this but decided not take such chances again and avoid the objectionable.
So, Dabholkar and his team made another hoarding where Ganpati had nothing in his hand that he shouldn’t have and the girl had nothing on her plate. The copy read “Ganpati Bappa More Dya”. The hoarding went up and the Amul Mumbai office at Fountain got a call from somebody who said, “I’m calling from the Shiv Sena shakha of Chowpatty. If you don’t remove this hoarding, we’ll burn it down in 48 hours”. Dabholkar asked his team in office to wait and try to talk to someone senior. He didn’t know anybody in Shiv Sena at that time; he got a list of all the leaders and, in desperation, called up Bala Saheb Thackeray. He called Dabholkar to Shiv Sena Bhawan and said, “I didn’t know Maharashtrians were writing these hoardings and I’m glad that a Maharashtrian is writing it.” So Dabholkar asked him what was objectionable in this. Thackeray replied, “Nothing. I’m a great fan of Amul Butter and a cartoonist myself. I don’t think anyone from Shiv Sena would have threatened for a thing like this. But if you are worried, I’ll call the Shakha Pramukh and protect this hoarding.”
After coming back to office, Dabholkar had a lengthy discussion with his team and he decided to keep the hoarding; he was hoping someone burns it. “What will happen if it burns down? Arnab Goswami, Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt will be here. For the next ten days, there will be nothing on television but Amul Butter. Arnab will have ten people on the panel and ask why the nation is losing its patience. Publicity was always welcome,” he said.
Dabholkar and his team kept the ad for 20 days. At that time there were no mobile phones and he would call his office to ask, “Kisi ne jalaya kya hoarding?” But the answer was negative. “So after 20 days I realised the ad was getting old and removed it. But after that year, till I handled Amul Butter, I stopped doing Ganpati hoardings; I feel that as a country we are getting overly sensitive about these topics. We have lost that sense of humour where we could see anything in a lighter vein. We are not in the business of making a social point; we are in the business of selling butter. We decided to stick to simpler topics. So we stuck to sports,” he said.
When footballer Diego Maradona was the star, Amul’s hoarding said, “Marad hona toh aisa hona. Butter hona toh Amul hona.” Then there was a test match against Pakistan in which Zaheer Abbas scored a century in every innings and the ad said, “Zaheer, ab bas and have utterly butterly Amul.” After the match in Karachi, where Zaheer got out for 14, another hoarding said, “Zaheer, thank you for listening to Amul!”
And then there was Bollywood. Dabholkar said, “When actor Raj Kapoor passed away, we decided not to make a joke out of it or even write a clever line, because Raj Kapoor was known as ‘the joker’. And a joker, no matter how sad or tearful he is, makes you smile. So our Amul girl had a painted smile but with tears in her eyes. We put this up, it became a huge hit and won several awards.” He added that while it was a good thing that the hoarding won those awards, the bad thing was that he had spent an entire year writing 45 clever lines, but the one that won the awards had no words on it.
“But that is the world of advertising and that is how creativity works,” he concluded.