For a very long time, my post on Amul: Longest running ad campaign in the world? is one of the most favorite search engine hits. I do not know why net searchers are fascinated with Amul's ads rather than the usual utterly salacious searches with a dose of butterly. I do not know if it has anything to do with the Amul Star Voice of India reality show currently on Indian television.
Amul: India's No. 1 Brand
Thanks to Trak.in, I was alerted to this interesting news: Amul is India's No. 1 brand, followed by Life Corporation of India (LIC), and Nokia.
Leading media, advertising and marketing publication Media magazine, together with regional brand consultancy Asian Integrated Media Limited and global market research company Synovate, has released the 2007 results from the annual Asia's Top 1000 Brands survey.
About the Survey: Nine markets were included in this fourth round of the survey – China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, India and Indonesia. Synovate interviewed people aged 15-64 years old, with sample sizes per market of 500, apart from China and India, where the sample was 750 across three and four top-tier cities respectively.
Asia's Top 10 Brands for 2007
| Rank | Brand |
| 1 | Nokia |
| 2 | Sony |
| 3 | Colgate |
| 4 | Coca Cola |
| 5 | Panasonic |
| 6 | Honda |
| 7 | 7-Eleven |
| 8 | Samsung |
| 9 | Nestle |
| 10 | Adidas |
You can see the Top 100 Asia brands and the top 3 in each market (country) here (PDF).
Word of Mouth Advertising
A Nielsen Global Survey shows that word-of-mouth advertising is still the most powerful in the world. Conducted twice-a-year among 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets from Europe, Asia Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East, Nielsen surveyed consumers on their attitudes toward thirteen types of advertising - from conventional newspaper and television ads to branded web sites and consumer-generated content.
87 percent of Internet accessing Indians still trust recommendations from others over any other kind of advertising, making word-of-mouth advertising the most powerful tool in the industry today. Let's take a look at the interesting Indian results:
| Form of Advertising Trusted | % |
| Recommendations from Consumers | 87 |
| Newspapers | 77 |
| Consumer opinions posted online | 73 |
| Brand Websites | 72 |
| Magazines | 71 |
| TV | 65 |
| Email I signed up for | 58 |
| Radio | 55 |
| Brand sponsorships | 52 |
| Search Engine Ads | 41 |
| Ads before movies | 41 |
| Online banner ads | 38 |
| Text ads on mobiles | 24 |
This is amazing - online opinions (on blogs, social networking sites, etc.) are trusted higher than TV advertisements! And what about those ads before (and during) movies? Can this persuade the sponsors to reduce those TV ad break intervals down to zero?
Related posts:
Why are you confused, Mahendra? The breaks are the times when you get to watch the match, the movie, or whatever. The leitmotif of television is advertising. The rest is only a vehicle, an unavoidable burden for the medium, the bread on which the (A)mulah is based.
Rambodoc:
Ha ha ha!
Mahendra: Amul’s is the most iconic advertising — and most hilarious puns and consistently good copywriting — that I have seen, and I still follow it on-line.
Rambodoc should write their tag lines I think
a very interesting post Mahendra and a subject which interests me greatly.
Thanks.
Shefaly: Thanks. You might want to check out my earlier post I’ve linked to.
And yes, Rambodoc can definitely join the advertising industry if anyone wishes to compete with Amul!
Nita: Thank you!
I am not sure we should compare recommendations by consumers to TV advertising. The two talk very differently to the audience. Besides let’s not forget it’s the TV ads which get us the super movies on our idiot boxes saving us movie ticket money.
Kapil: Thanks. I’m not sure about this, but I think it is the advertising industry itself that considers word-of-mouth recommendations by consumers as a form of advertising. Each of the 13 forms of advertising researched talks differently with the audience.
Yes, it is the TV ads that make TV commercially viable. I was just venting out my irritation over these ads and the unavailability of Tivo in India.
Thanks for visiting!
I loved some of the the Fevicol ads too, especially the one where the shadow of a person gets stuck to the fevicol shop shutter.
I think the Indian ad agencies have some of the most creative people aboard.
Madhuri: Thanks. Yes, those Fevicol ads were pure creative genius. There are many, many examples of superlative ads in India, but they’re usually restricted to one campaign or two. Amul is in a class by itself because of its sustained campaign.
cute, simple, yet communicates the message.…
i always loved their ad campaign.
Ankur: Thanks and welcome back! I love to meet Amul-ad-lovers!
most famous and easily recognisable advertisement