The Hindu Business Line : Brand new India!

’The fact that print was for a niche, upper-class elite audience meant one more thing. Advertising could be more direct and clear. Like the ad for Colgate where kissing is openly referred to.’

Vinay Kamath

“Are you afraid to kiss him because of your breath? He leans nearer, whispering romantic words. But how can you be sure your kiss will please? Are you sure your breath is sweet and fresh…?”

An audacious ad from a contemporary newspaper advertising a new brand of gum, you would think. But you’d need to flash back sixty years as those are lines from an advertisement for Colgate Dental Cream from the August 15, 1947, edition of The Hindu. The wordy ad then goes on to extol the virtues of Colgate, on its “penetrating foam which gets into crevices between teeth…” and “leaves the teeth thoroughly and beautifully clea n… and the breath sweet.” Surely, this ad could leap out of the pages of a newspaper even today.

Thumbing through the hoary pages of The Hindu of August 1947, one finds that many of the brands enmeshed in our lives today were pretty much entrenched those days and nurtured, built and advertised by brand owners over the years the y continue to flourish, albeit in new avatars. Sure, many have fallen by the wayside and disappeared from the pages of newspapers but more than a handful have survived the longevity test.

The dawn of Independence also saw a clutch of private airlines advertising their intra-city services, including Tata Line and Deccan Airways. In a sense, history repeats itself as today a host of private airlines battle it out in the skies. Cigarette and tobacco ads were plentiful but have disappeared, by law, from today’s advertising. Sample this from the August 15 edition: “Now, there’s a man’s tobacco: Garden’s Coolie Cut Plug Tobacco,” with a picture of a smoking pipe. Or Will’s Scissors, which make “for such a soothing smoke.”

As brand consultant Harish Bijoor points out, the prime medium in those days was print, which reached only the literate. “This meant one simple thing. Advertising was meant for the haves who could read. This also meant that advertising was centric to the ‘luxury’ product and brand as defined then.”

Reflecting an era

A Lux detergent was therefore luxury, just as a Monaco biscuit. So were Dettol and Amrutanjan. “Each of these competed with home-grown commodity versions of relief and satiation that did not cost much. The fact that print was for a niche, upper-class elite audience meant one more thing. Advertising could be more direct and clear. Like the ad for Colgate where kissing is openly referred to,” elaborates Bijoor. However, today, the very definition of luxury has changed, and the luxury palate is all about an Audi, a Swarovski or a Ferroro Rocher.

Premium teas may have been a luxury too. As this ad on the front page of The Hindu of August 17 for Lipton tea: “Come, oh, come ye, tea-thirsty restless ones, The kettle boils, bubbles and says musically…” Rabindra nath Tagore. The ad goes on to elaborate on Tagore as an ardent tea drinker and says: “We should hesitate to link his name directly with our teas but we like to speculate on the subject of which of our several brands it was that won the favour of the great poet of Bengal.” Lipton, a Unilever brand now, still holds its own in premium teas today, extending the brand to flavoured teas as well.

Several of the ads of 1947 used line drawing or caricature to depict; very few used photographs and those that did were some of the bigger brands such as a Colgate or a Pond’s. The advent of colour printing in The Hindu in the 1940s saw a profusion of ads for movies under various banners. The August 15 issue in particular saw several brands heralding Independence and the ‘dominion of India ’.

A prominent advertiser even in those days was Lever Brothers, the predecessor of Hindustan Unilever, the biggest advertiser today. Take this ad for scourer brand Vim from the August 18 issue: “Don’t dim it, Vim it in a flash… not a single stain remains, nothing but glistening cleanliness… tell your servant always to use Vim…” Comments S. Ramachander, strategic management consultant, “Great clarity, its positioning is unchanged. Except that the servant is a bold step, ok for those days but I wonder if it would be politically correct today.”

Indeed, if ads are a reflection of the times we live in, this Parle ad in the August 15 edition for its Gluco and Monaco biscuits epitomised the wheat shortage the country faced at the time of Independence till deliverance came in the 1960s with the Green Revolution. The ad said: “We regret to announce that our Gluco and Monaco biscuits will be out of production until the wheat situation improves. In the meantime, please ask for our Barley biscuits.”

Brand avatars

Some brands have transformed themselves. One of Hindustan Unilever’s biggest toilet soap brands today, Lux, was also present as a washing powder, as this ad depicts: “Lux: for gentle washing of lovely clothes… lovely clothes enhance a woman’s charm…” Recalls Ramachander, “Both Lux toilet soap and Lux washing powder co-existed nicely. The latter was made from genuine vegetable oils, very soft on the hands and did not lather in hard water, unlike Surf. For a while, until synthetics took over, the Lux brand powder was preferred for silks, woollens, delicate and expensive clothes and was effective.” The brand has traversed a long way, from the toilet soap endorsed by Bollywood beauties to Shah Rukh Khan immersed in a tub. Lux washing powder doesn’t exist in the Indian market.

Many more brands, quite familiar to us, were advertised prominently in 1947: Cadbury’s Bournvita, Hamam and 501 soaps, Pond’s cold cream, Dettol (which expects to be a Rs 1,000 crore brand in a few years!), Amrutanjan, Britannia, Palmolive, Gillette blades, Bata, HMV, Philips, Godrej shaving rounds and sticks (creams were considered expensive and were rare anyway), Glycodin cough syrup, Dalda (no longer with HUL but sold to Bunge). Says Ramanujam Sridhar of communications consultancy Brand.Comm: “The brands are still around and some are still dominant because the brand managers and custodians of the brands have realised the value of advertising and investing in the brands. A successful brand has to be nurtured over a period of time. This is a big difference to today’s thinking with our preoccupation with the immediate quarter and hence the great desire to rely on sales promotions.”

The survivor brands

A peek at the survivor brands over the last 60 years, and HUL brands win hands down. Most brands that survive today are from its portfolio: Sunlight, Vim, Lux, Hamam, Pond’s (the last two entered the HUL fold later through acquisitions). “Most survivor brands are lowest-common-denominator brands. These are brands that have been ubiquitous in their appeal and solution spectrum. And each has fought and earned its increasing market share from local options and home-made solutions. These are no rocket-science products but are day-to-day solutions of the common man,” says Bijoor. Also, many of these hardy brands have become flag-bearers of the company itself: Colgate, Amrutanjan, Dettol are classic examples.

Says Ramachander, “To me the striking thing about these examples is how well the really good brands have aged. In survey after survey through the ’80s and ’90s the toppers were Colgate, Vicks, Wills, Lifebuoy, Dettol, Dalda, Surf, Lux, Amrutanjan… to be joined by Maruti and Titan later.” Adds Bijoor, “The brand is a thought. Each of these brands is a potent thought that has lived on for 60 years. Thoughts need to be kept alive, energised periodically, added zing to, and nurtured. Each of these survivor brands has had the best of brand mollycoddling for sure.”

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