"Nieghbour's Envy,Owners Pride"..............

The Devil that entertained

We have forever cherished and admired the legendary marketing campaigns that owed their genesis to what is now popularly known as the hub of advertising in America –Madison avenue .Little did we notice that our own mainland has exceptional instances of legendary marketing campaigns that have meticulously metamorphosed brands and their success stories.

Travel back in time and see if you can recollect visual traces of a green devil, a devil who was rather cute than scary whose husky voice, pointed horns, long nails and a spiky tail, stirred you but didn’t really scare you that much. And why you didn’t dread the devil was because he delivered a unique message to you in that spooky yet husky voice. The message was, “Nieghbour’s Envy, Owners Pride.”and the devil discussion was Onida’s unique Mascot during the early 80’S

The then popular home grown electronic brand owned by Mirc Electronics Ltd, established in 1981 was one of the many victims of liberalization and was vying hard for a descent market share amidst MNC players like LG and Samsung becoming prominent by the day.

While the big players fought their battle with aggressive pricing and distribution strategies, Onida had a tough time carving a niche for itself while maintaining the volume of sales subsequently.

And so when the battle got fierce, Onida employed weapons from an ad agency ,Advertising avenues, and art director Gopi Kukade (who initially crated the devil mascot) copywriter Ashok Roy and marketer Gautam Rakshit became Onida’s artillery to win the marketing warfare.

The tag line the Roy come up with, more than just hit the bull’s eye. In those days buying was commensurate to flaunting and thus boosting one’s self esteem and the line communicated that buying an Onida TV could make that easily possible for any one.

The timing worked all the more for them because buying colored television was a new entrant in the list of prevalent fads of that time. Introduction of financial options like payment in installments made the picture rosier!

And Onida , whose sales figures were sinking in deep red sea, resurrected its topline with soaring numbers. This continued for two decades where by the company stayed afloat with a profit line and devil, who were both, err in green!

Probably that justifies why the brand stuck to a devil for two decades and still managed to not scare its consumer but entertain them.

But as we stepped in to the new millennium ,Onida moved on without the devil saying that it was no more relevant to entice customers on those lines because they had developed an individual taste which stood irrespective of the societal preference, whatsoever.

While the art director, Gopi Kukde didn’t concede to the decision, he and many others admit that the tag-line was a benchmark in giving copywriters in the industry their due worth. Guess the devil did a lot of magic in its life or should we say, afterlife!