Iconic Indian ads for the ages: a cultural history, 1966 to the 1990s

Advertising is the part of culture that pays for the rest of it. These are five moments when Indian advertising did something larger than selling, and what the scholarship says about them.

Written by the Colleviate Strategy desk

The artwork in this series is original and shows fictional brands. We have not redrawn any real campaign, mascot or slogan, and no national symbol appears. They are homages to the idioms of their decades, drawn for this series, and each is labelled as an original.

Why read old advertising at all?

Because it is the most honest archive of what a country was told it wanted. Two traditions help. Adorno and Horkheimer, writing in 1944, argued that mass-produced culture works by standardisation: products and entertainments that differ on the surface and agree underneath. They called the surface difference pseudo-individuality. Raymond Williams, writing in New Left Review in 1960, called advertising a magic system, one that dresses ordinary goods in meanings and, in his view, obscures the real choices behind them.

Neither was writing about India, and both can be argued with. Used carefully, they give us questions to ask of an old ad: what is it standardising, and what is it dressing up?

The five moments

1. 1966, the hoarding. A butter brand turns the outdoor billboard into a daily joke about the news. Read the essay.
2. 1969 onwards, the price. A detergent built for households the market had ignored, and a jingle that carried it. Read the essay.
3. 1984, the sponsor inside the story. A serial on the state broadcaster carries a brand's name. Read the essay.
4. 1988, the state as advertiser. A national film in the form of a commercial. Read the essay.
5. The 1980s and 1990s, the agency. Who decided what “Indian” looked like in an ad. Read the essay.

And a method, so you can do this yourself: how to read a vintage ad in five questions.

A medium map

Decade	The medium that mattered	What it let an ad do
1960s	Outdoor hoardings and print	Be seen daily, and be cheap enough to change weekly
1970s	Print, and the first television commercials	Show the product in a life, not just in a pack
1980s	Doordarshan, in colour from 1982	Reach a whole household at once, and attach a name to a story
1990s	Satellite and cable	Fight for attention among many channels instead of one

Seven originals

For each decade we drew a period piece in its printing idiom, with caricature figures, for an invented brand. They are on Instagram and LinkedIn as a series, and each is credited as an original. If one of them stirs a memory of a hoarding, a serial or a scooter ride, that is the purpose of the genre, and the reason these ads outlived their products.

A note on our sources

The history is drawn from trade press and publisher descriptions, and where they disagree on a date or a credit we say so. The scholarship is cited as its publishers and reviewers describe it. Where something is our reading, we label it. If you can correct a detail, please write to us.