Creative Ads in India: Why Amul’s Topical Hoardings Still Work After Decades

Creative ads in India rarely last a season, let alone decades. Yet Amul’s topical hoardings, which began in 1966, still react to the week’s news with a pun and a girl in a polka dot frock. Why would a butter brand keep commenting on films, cricket and politics?

Last updated: November 2026

According to ThePrint, the first topical was a roadside hoarding in March 1966, during Mumbai’s horse racing season. It showed the Amul girl as a jockey with the word “Thoroughbread”. The same report says the team had run out of things to say about food alone, so they began responding to news and popular events.

The campaign came from the agency led by Sylvester daCunha, with illustrator Eustace Fernandes creating the girl. daCunha has written in Business Standard that “Utterly Butterly” began as a suggestion from his wife, Nisha, and that Amul’s head, Dr V Kurien, let the agency run the ads without his approval.

The Marketing Lesson: What Creative Ads in India Can Learn From Amul

The easy label for Amul topicals is newsjacking, or moment marketing: attaching a brand to something already in the news. Most brands do this badly. A logo gets pasted on a trending topic, and nobody remembers it by the weekend.

Amul is different because the format never changes. The girl, the pun and the line “Utterly Butterly Delicious” stay fixed, while only the news changes. A reader recognises the brand before reading a word. This is what Jenni Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg Bass Institute calls a distinctive brand asset: something that identifies the brand without its name.

Now ask why butter needs this. Butter is a low involvement purchase. Nobody wakes up wanting to think about it. News gives the brand a reason to appear in a conversation people are already having, and a hoarding on a commuter route is where many of them see it. That reasoning is my reading, not Amul’s stated strategy.

The format has also survived a change of medium. Lokmat Times reports that in May 2026 Amul posted “BUTTERVYA” on Instagram, days after the Saif Ali Khan film Kartavya premiered on Netflix. The line read “Amul FULFILS ITS DUTY”. Netflix India replied, and the production house praised the ad. The medium moved from hoarding to feed, but the grammar stayed the same.

I often ask my MBA students to name a topical ad from a brand other than Amul. The silence is useful. It shows that speed alone does not build memory. Speed plus a fixed format does.

For more on why print and outdoor still earn a place, see my guide to print advertising in India. For other long running examples, see memorable Indian advertisements.

Think Like a Marketer

• If Amul stopped using the girl and kept the puns, what would be lost?
• When does newsjacking help a brand, and when does it look opportunistic?
• Which other Indian brand has a format you would recognise without the logo?
• Amul comments on films, sport and politics. Which topics would you advise a brand to avoid, and why?

How to Use Amul Topicals in Placement Interviews

Likely question: “What makes Amul’s advertising effective after so many years?”

How to answer: Name the concept first: a distinctive brand asset used for newsjacking. Explain that the format stays fixed while the content changes, which builds recognition over time. Then add the low involvement point: topicals keep a routine product mentally available.

Bonus tip: Say how you would measure it. Recognition without the logo is a better test than likes.

Final Takeaway on Creative Ads in India

Newsjacking without a fixed format is noise; with one, it becomes a habit that people look forward to.