Throwback Thursday: Onida's deal with the devil

Since the dawn of Indian advertising some 70-odd years ago, brands have created a rich legacy of unforgettable mascots like the Amul Girl, Air India Maharaja, Asian Paint's Gattu and the Lijjat Bunny.

Distinct as they are, these mascots also have some overlapping traits. They are all cute and pleasant, qualities that make a mascot endearing to the customers and create an emotional connection with them.

Yet in 1980, an Indian electronics brand decided to take the counter-intuitive approach, throwing some basic tenets of the mascot rulebook out of the window. In so doing, it created one of the most memorable mascots India has ever seen -- the Onida devil.

Devil in the details

In the 1980s, small-screen programming was rising in India on the back of Ramayan and Mahabharat, which were immensely popular. The craze for colour TV grew in 1982 when Indian households started splurging on colour TVs to catch the 9th Asiad Games.

When Onida (MIRC Electronics) entered the Indian television market, there were established players like Crown, Salora, BPL and Videocon ruling the roost.

Onida televisions were technologically superior to available TV brands. Nevertheless, despite offering over 60 channels (when other brands had a little over 10), the company knew that tom-toming about its cutting-edge technology would get it nowhere.

To stand out among these highly-competitive brands and to clinch a piece of the consumers' mindshare, Onida had to devise a clutter-breaking marketing campaign with an emotional impact. 

Back in the 80s, television was an aspirational appliance. The ones who owned a good set were quite often the object of their neighbours' envy, an insight Onida anchored its ad campaign on. Anyone who has felt envy knows the might of negative emotions. 

"Onida tapped on this emotion of consumers and promoted their brand as one that non-owners would ‘envy’ and covet," points out Mitesh Kothari, Co-Founder and CCO, White Rivers Media.

Envy is also one of the seven deadly sins, and a mascot that could embody it in its entirety was the devil himself.

A devil of a job

Advertising Avenues under the late Goutam Rakshit was tasked with creating this challenging campaign along with art designer and legend Gopi Kukde who designed the mascot.

It took model co-ordinator David Whitbread three months of convincing to play the devil since the ad makers felt that he had an interesting impish face for the role. He finally agreed to do it for a sum of Rs 6,000, according to a news publication. He also became a quasi-celeb in the months to come.

Instead of the usual red, the Onida devil was cloaked entirely in green, the colour of envy, of course. Sharp nails, horns and a pointy tail completed the ensemble. So terrifying was the final look that parents had a hard time pacifying crying kids every time Whitbread appeared on the screen.

Accompanying the ad was Ashok Roy's tagline "Neighbour's envy, owner's pride," which became inextricably linked to Onida for decades and many taglines later.

The campaign first started with full-page print ads in 1982 followed by the TV commercial in 1983-84.

The gamble paid off and Onida secured what it set out to achieve: a valuable piece of the market share and audience mindshare.

Ritu Singh writes in her book A History of Indian Advertising in Ten-and-a-half Chapters: "Presumably as a fallout of the ad, Onida's market share is estimated to have risen from 5-6 per cent in 1981 to 19-20 per cent in 1985."

Rakshit would later tell a publication that the ad was loved and hated in equal measure. Despite some criticism from within the industry, Onida persisted with the campaign as its impact could be seen in the rising sales numbers.

"Onida surely took a risk that we all know tremendously paid off. More than mixed reactions, it instilled a curiosity in people that compelled them to explore the product," notes Kothari.

A fiendishly good legacy

The devil became synonymous with the company's communication till 1998. Whitbread himself was associated with the role for 14 years until he decided to hang up his boots.

While actors Ashish Choudhary, Rajesh Khera and Aamir Bashir later replaced him, their ads were met with varying measures of success.

The campaign saw a few iterations and eventually was passed on from Advertising Avenues to Rediffusion DY&R and then eventually Taproot Dentsu.

The company decided to retire the devil for good in 1998 since they no longer wanted the brand to be associated with envy anymore. However, after sales and brand identity took a beating, the company thought of bringing him back in 2004.

Vivek Sharma, the then VP-Marketing, Sales and Service, MIRC Electronics (Onida) told e4m back in 2005, “The devil was a memorable mascot for Onida. Reintroducing the devil in 2004 was a wise decision. We observed that a lot of misbranding was the result of not using the devil as Onida’s face for eight years.”

Sales shot up and people took notice of Onida's unique brand positioning in the market again. 

"We registered around 50 per cent growth in volumes as far as CTVs are concerned. In addition, we also recorded a 50 per cent increase in our overall product portfolio. In the period between October and November, we sold around 70,000–80,000 DVDs and 20,000 washing machines. The fact remains that the devil’s return has added to our brand salience in a big way," said the late Chandramouli Venkatesan, who was the VP (Marketing and Sales) at MIRC Electronics.

Onida brought back the fiend in 2018 later for its AC brand, hoping to recreate some of its old magic.

Yet, the green fiend is one of the most powerful icons of Indian advertising and we are richer for having known him.