Indian advertising has been using kids in its narrative since the mid-1950s. Detergents used to show kids winning cups in competitions and running home in their spotless white school uniforms. Milk food drinks like Horlicks and Bournvita too used to show kids performing well, thanks to the goodness of these brands.
Complan took it to another level in the early ’80s when it featured a boy and a girl in its ad. Played by kid models who would become future film stars, Shahid Kapoor and Ayesha Takia, the ad had them singing “I am a Complan girl, I am a Complan boy … and we love our Complan mummy”. In a sense, it was the first of its kind where the girl child was the centre of the storyline. She plays basketball, she helps her mother. But the brand could not get typecast as a girl brand, so they did have a son in the story who adds, “I am a Complan boy”. Experts say that along with Farex, which was positioned as a “weaning food” for infants, Complan changed the way child nutrition was perceived and promoted in the country. Till Complan came on the scene and started speaking about child growth, Indian children were growing on their own and did not need any special additives. But Complan changed that narrative. If Ayesha Takia won hearts as the Complan girl, the all-time favourite little girl was probably the Rasna girl.
Played by Ankitha Jhaveri, the Rasna girl created by Mudra Communications went on to capture the imagination of millions of Indians, old and young and made Rasna a huge success. In one of their early ads, Ankita is waiting for her dad to come home from work. The doorbell rings and she says to herself, “Pappa aa gaye” (Dad has come). Her mother offers him coffee. But her father says no. She offers tea, he says no. “What will Mummy do?” wonders the little girl. She then offers Rasna to her mom, who makes Rasna for the tired father. The brand had numerous takes on the girl and her love for Rasna, for her birthday and other occasions. In a sense, the brand targeted young mothers through their kids.
Numerous other brands began using children in their advertisements in the ’80s and ’90s.
Kids come rushing home from school and yell “Bhook lagi hai, Mummy!” (Mom, we are hungry). Mother tells them, “Two minutes.” And the brand Maggi 2-Minute Noodles was born with a bang. By targeting the right moment in a mother’s life – when she has to prepare something hot quickly for her kids – the brand went on to create a new category. It is difficult to change food habits, but Maggi achieved a miracle through a combination of kid pester power, value for money and convenience of usage.
Categories like biscuits, chocolates and toffees had traditionally been featuring children to further their cause. Be it Cadbury chocolates with their “Sometimes Cadbury can say it better than words” stories in the ’80s, or Melody which offered chocolate inside a caramel toffee, or even cream biscuits – the brands had their job cut out. Get into the house through the kids and you are safely in the kitchen and on the monthly shopping list.
While working on a confectionery brand in the ’80s, I was part of a serious discussion on the role of advertising and the best time to launch a kid-focused campaign. I said that the best time to reach a kid was when she was free, maybe during vacations, in summer or during any of the other breaks. The veteran marketer T Krishnakumar, who now heads Coca-Cola’s very large bottling business in India, destroyed my hypothesis by saying that the best time to launch a kid-focused product is when the kid is attending school. The argument went as follows: A child learns about a new product from television or from a retailer. He then has to tell someone. When he goes to school the next day, he has ten or 20 eager listeners, eager to learn something new. If the kid is going to be the viral mechanism for the new product, it stands to reason that a kid does not see the ad for a new product – of interest to him – as an ad. He or she sees it as valuable information that could be traded at school.
So it was propounded that when advertising to kids, we need not apply the minimum threshold principle to advertising. The levels of advertising for products aimed at children could be much lower. But if we advertise during the period when the kid has the maximum audience, we will be able to amplify our message that much more. As Spanish poet, philosopher and novelist George Santayana has said, “Children are natural mythologists: they beg to be told tales, and love not only to invent but to enact falsehoods.”
There are other categories of products that use children as an entry ticket into homes. Colgate is the biggest toothpaste brand. They realised that mothers are always worried about the brushing habits of their kids. Hence, for over five decades, Colgate advertising has always had a strong and sometimes subtle endorsement of the child in the home. While the advertising message may have focused on the dentist and the endorsement he gave to the Colgate brand, the ads often ended with a kid saying, “Is ka swaad mujhe behad pasand hai!” (I love its taste.) The brand has a nice taste, just to ensure that kids continue brushing for a few seconds more. In fact, toothpaste brands like Forhans lost out because they did not figure out the need to make their offering “tasty” for children.
In the ’90s, Colgate attempted to accelerate penetration by coming out with a sachet packet. It was around this time that shampoo brands like Velvette and Chik were runaway successes thanks to their sachet pack. Colgate came out with a small pack featuring a camping situation; they launched “Colgate ka chota packet”. The effort was to accelerate the movement from tooth powders and other home remedies, like coal dust, to toothpaste. Unfortunately, the sachet strategy did not work for Colgate. I suspect consumers did not see toothpaste as an occasional-use product. Shampooing is not a daily habit in many Indian homes and so a sachet of shampoo could be bought for that special occasion, once or twice a week. Consumers probably thought that if they were ready for toothpaste, they might as well buy the big tube and not go for a small sachet. Interestingly, even in the case of hair oils, the sachet strategy has not worked as well as it has worked for shampoos, probably for the same reason.
In the ’80s and ’90s, another category started advertising in films and on TV, aimed at kids and mothers. This was the school accessories category. Brands like S Kumars came on TV to sell their school uniforms. So did brands like Bata with their school shoes.
The flux of ads featuring “kids as kids” kept growing to include categories like jams, soft drinks, snacks, biscuits, sweets, etc.
Excerpted with permission from Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles: India through 50 Years of Advertising, Ambi Parameswaran, PanMacmillan India.
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