Air India’s legacy mascot is given a boost...out of the door – 4Ps B&M delves into royal history
As the driver used to pick us up from our
school, dispassionately herding the thoroughly hungry and raucous lot of us students into the bus, the grime and the heat of the afternoon sun – garnished with a motionless traffic jam – perhaps can never be forgotten that easily... And neither can be forgotten those spectacularly huge Air India billboards standing resplendent in the sun, glorified by the mascot we all knew as the Maharaja, billboards we would crane our necks to see, for not only were they creativity benchmarks of those times, but also because we, er, loved the Maharaja!
Born in 1946 – with all credit of his ideation going to the late Bobby Kooka (the then Commercial Director of Air India) – this royal ruler stole all eyes, proudly donning a fresh avatar each time he was happily placed on the government airline’s towering billboards of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and right within the churning 90s too.
His attire, persona and communiqué – sometimes dressed as a sumo-wrestler; sometimes playing the snake charmer and some other times, becoming a part of Moscow’s popular chess board – all combined to make him perhaps the most recalled brand of us Indians through the latter part of the last century! When 4Ps B&M caught up with the effervescent J. Bharghav, Head, Corporate Communication, Air India, he expectably and quite succinctly agreed on the unbeaten popularity of the Maharaja, “Around 30-40 years ago, the advertising of Air India was purely conservative as Air India spent most of its advertising budgets on hoardings based on current affairs fancying the Indians at large with the Maharaja as the spokesperson.”
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
As the driver used to pick us up from our
school, dispassionately herding the thoroughly hungry and raucous lot of us students into the bus, the grime and the heat of the afternoon sun – garnished with a motionless traffic jam – perhaps can never be forgotten that easily... And neither can be forgotten those spectacularly huge Air India billboards standing resplendent in the sun, glorified by the mascot we all knew as the Maharaja, billboards we would crane our necks to see, for not only were they creativity benchmarks of those times, but also because we, er, loved the Maharaja!Born in 1946 – with all credit of his ideation going to the late Bobby Kooka (the then Commercial Director of Air India) – this royal ruler stole all eyes, proudly donning a fresh avatar each time he was happily placed on the government airline’s towering billboards of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and right within the churning 90s too.
His attire, persona and communiqué – sometimes dressed as a sumo-wrestler; sometimes playing the snake charmer and some other times, becoming a part of Moscow’s popular chess board – all combined to make him perhaps the most recalled brand of us Indians through the latter part of the last century! When 4Ps B&M caught up with the effervescent J. Bharghav, Head, Corporate Communication, Air India, he expectably and quite succinctly agreed on the unbeaten popularity of the Maharaja, “Around 30-40 years ago, the advertising of Air India was purely conservative as Air India spent most of its advertising budgets on hoardings based on current affairs fancying the Indians at large with the Maharaja as the spokesperson.”
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
