MS Dhoni’s media gag by BCCI: Amul takes a dig

Mumbai: May 30, 2013

India captain MS Dhoni’s silence at a Mumbai press conference on the spot-fixing controversy to hit Indian cricket has become the subject of Amul’s latest ad spoof.

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Dhoni evaded questions on the IPL spot-fixing saga and merely smiled when two journalists quizzed him on the fixing row, while the media manager turned down the questions.

The ad, titled “No baat? No bol?” shows Dhoni and his Indian teammates refusing to speak when quizzed by the Amul girl.

Amul is known to create ad campaigns as series of hoardings with topical ads, relating to day-to-day issues.

The campaign is widely popular and earned a Guinness world record for the longest running ad campaign in the world.

It all started when in 1966 when Sylvester daCunha, then the managing director of the advertising agency, ASP, clinched the account for Amul butter.

Despite encountering political pressure on several occasions, daCunha’s agency has made it a policy of not backing down.

The Amul girl was created as a mascot as a rival to the Polson butter girl.”Eustace Fernandez (the art director) and I decided that we needed a girl who would worm her way into a housewife’s heart. And who better than a little girl?” says Sylvester daCunha. And so it came about that the famous Amul Moppet was born.

Some of the recent ads on cricket include India’s captaincy drama, Shane Warne–Marlon Samuels spat, Monty Panesar’s efforts in the India-England series (‘Monty, Pan-asardar hai’), Cheteshwar Pujara and Alastair Cook’s batting (‘Pet Pujara’), Unmukt Chand captaining India to the U-19 World Cup (‘Chand, tare tod laya’), a spoof on Shoaib Akhtar’s book Controversially Yours and a tribute to Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi (‘Khuda Ko Yahin Mansur Tha!’).