50 Years Old Marketing Strategy of Amul That Even Works Today

Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative that has become synonymous with milk and milk products in the country. Formed in 1946, it has grown to be India’s largest food brand, with an annual turnover of over $5 billion. Behind this remarkable success story lies an equally outstanding marketing strategy that has made Amul a household name for generations. This blog post takes a deep dive into Amul’s marketing mix and strategies that catalyzed the White Revolution in India.

About Amul

The Taste of India Amul was born in the village of Anand in Gujarat in 1946 when India was still under British rule. The fledgling cooperative began as a response to the exploitation of marginal milk producers by intermediaries. Under the guidance of founder Tribhuvandas Patel, Amul created a robust supply chain from farm to consumer, empowering millions of farmers.

Amul has led India’s dairy revolution in the decades since aided by the Operation Flood campaign. Today, with 18 member unions, 18,700 village societies, and 3.6 million farmer members, it has become one of India’s most loved brands. Synonymous with our childhoods, it is now globally renowned for its high-quality, affordable dairy products, including milk, cheese, butter, ice cream, and chocolates. Indeed, for generations of Indians, the “utterly butterly” ad jingles have come to represent “The Taste of India.”

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What’s New with Amul: Expanding Products and Palates

In recent years, Amul has expanded its product range in exciting new directions. Amul milk beverages like lassi, buttermilk, and flavored milk have captured urban markets. Its gourmet cheeses now vie for space amongst European varieties, while Amul chocolates hold their own against premium global brands.

Expanding overseas, Amul has found markets in the US, the Caribbean region, and the Middle East. However, closer home, returns from rural penetration still form the bread and butter for Amul. Its value-based pricing allows access to all income groups, cementing its position in Indian kitchens for the long haul.

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Defining the Amul Consumer: Traditional to Trendy Tastebuds

Understanding its diverse demography has been vital to Amul’s marketing playbook. By tailoring its products and pricing to mass market needs, Amul has defined multiple personas in its customer base:

The Housewife: Symbolized famously by the polka-dotted Amul girl, this cost-conscious homemaker has been Amul’s most loyal supporter through the years. Mrs Shekhawat, busy managing her middle-class Mumbai household, is happy paying a few rupees extra for the consistent quality, taste, and hygiene that Amul guarantees across its product range.
The New Age Professional: An increasingly young, affluent, well-traveled demographic has meant diversification into value-added gourmet products by Amul. Rahul, a Bangalore-based IT executive, picks up his cup of café-style Amul Hot Chocolate on the way to his high-rise apartment after a long day coding, happy to indulge in international tastes at affordable prices.
The Global Indian: Expats like Leela Aunty in New Jersey love ordering Feta cheese, chocolates, and ice cream online from Amul’s overseas website. Consuming Made-in-India brands gives her comfort and connection to homeland tastes amidst the dislocation of immigration. Amul’s world-class facilities and accreditations make its products easy to export.

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Strategic Marketing Mix: Accessibility, Availability and Recall

Amul has intelligently combined the 4Ps of marketing to create accessibility, availability, and top-of-mind recall in consumers across urban and rural India.

Product Strategy

Starting with just milk, Amul’s product range today has expanded widely to keep pace with changing consumer needs. Categorized broadly into milk products, ice creams, paneer, ghee, milk powders, cheese, chocolates, and others, Amul manufactures over 150 products at its 40 state-of-the-art plants.

Continuous innovation and localization drive Amul’s product mix. For instance, catering to regional tastes, it sells mishti doi in Bengal, basundi in Gujarat, and shrikhand elsewhere—premium items like chocolate truffle cakes and honey apricot ice cream target niche urban buyers. There are even Ready-To-Eat kadhi-chawal and rajma-chawal SKUs today!

Price Strategy

Amul’s value-based pricing has allowed entire households to shift to quality packaged dairy, unlike loose, unhygienic alternatives they purchased earlier from informal sources. Its princely sum starter packet at just Rs 5 made Amul Bengal’s first packaged milk preferred by even domestic helpers and drivers.

Amul passes on profits made from metros to subsidize low-cost products for villages—thus, a 500 ml milk pouch in Mumbai costs Rs 50 while it is priced at just Rs 22 in rural UP, allowing greater penetration. During the 2011 food inflation, Amul famously did not raise milk prices for months—elevating consumer goodwill.

Place Strategy

Amul sells 20 lakh liters of milk daily—to put that into perspective, that equals Sri Lanka’s entire daily consumption! Reaching such scale requires an intricate supply chain spanning 200,000 distribution vehicles covering 500,000 retail outlets and 11,000 booths in 7,000 towns across India.

Essentials like butter, ghee, and SMP get channeled into India’s public distribution system, accessed by the poorest citizens and subsidized under government schemes. In Bengaluru, home delivery models supply office goers their daily pouches. MCCs in villages double as one-stop shops aggregating demand. Abroad, partnerships with Indian grocery chains and online orders via Amazon USA facilitate smooth order fulfillment for NRIs.

Promotion Strategy

Amul’s advertisements with the Utterly Butterly Amul girl have made it iconic. Created as a white revolution mascot to create awareness, she offered cheeky social commentary that touched a chord with every Indian. This early mover advantage with mass appeal advertising played no small role in Amul’s success—the Amul girl is now the world’s longest-running ad!

Promoting milk as a daily essential rather than a mere commodity, copy plays on witty wordplay like Sip-Up and Gulpit Down alongside the Simply Amul tagline. Winter and summer campaigns tempt consumers with relevance-based incentives like hot chocolate, thandai, and milkshakes. Sports victories spur inventive flavors like Amul Tennis and Cricket Maximus tubs. In the USA, the association as the official partner of the New York Giants NFL team and Madison Square’s annual food event widens its appeal.

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Competitor Landscape: Fending Off MNCs and Cooperatives

Here are three significant competitors with whom Amul contends in the dairy products space:

Nestle: Global giant Nestle offers branded dairy products like milk, paneer, ghee, and yoghurt under brands such as Everyday, Milkmaid, and Nestle a+ Nourish. But barring Maggi noodles, Nestle lacks the homegrown appeal and cost advantage that Amul enjoys owing to its cooperative structure.
Britannia: This biscuits leader’s rate of rural expansion remains limited, given its roots as a white-collar bakery brand. Though competitive in cheese, the dairy portfolio also pales in nutritional properties against the all-season natural goodness promised by Amul through its fresh milk supply chain.
Mother Dairy: Amul’s biggest Indian challenger, Mother Dairy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the milk cooperative National Dairy Development Board, is currently limited in its geographic expanse, with a significant footprint only in Northern states. Taste-wise, most consumers say Amul holds a quality edge.

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Unique Marketing Factors

Inadequate cold storage, lack of transport, and ignorant consumers initially posed significant hurdles to creating a pan-India milk market. But Amul adopted innovative marketing ideas aligned with ground realities to overcome limitations and drive widespread adoption of milk as an essential, nutritious commodity.

Mascot Brand Ambassador: The Utterly Butterly Amul girl in a polka dress has been a vital differentiator. Used since 1967, it created joyful awareness rather than hard sell. From sporting swimsuits in summer unique ice-cream campaigns to offering condolences when famous personalities passed away, she injected wit, humor, and warmth into a precocious child character who felt like everyone’s friend or neighbor growing up. The innocent, tiny girl winning over the big, imperfect world portrayed the odds surmounted by humble dairy farmers with Amul’s cooperation. This pioneering branded mascot concept paid rich dividends over decades.
Localized Production: Regional consumer tastes were satisfied by setting up state-of-the-art manufacturing plants across India staffed by locals, creating localized offerings like mishti doi and shrikhand. Instead of a one-size-fits-all national strategy, this last-mile connectivity to local preferences was a masterstroke.
Functional Benefits over Emotional Appeals: Utilitarian pull highlighted tangible advantages of Amul milk like Year-round Availability, consistent Quality, and quantity Commitment. During scarcity, Amul assured supply without diluting purity. Compared to loose milk’s questionable hygiene and changeable composition, this reliability and government certification created huge consumer confidence even for a higher-priced packaged product.
Umbrella Branding: Despite launching numerous products, Amul stuck to corporate level Amul branding with minimal product branding. Researchers have concluded this conferred halo effect elevating the perception of all Amul items as superior. Unlike Nestle or Britannia, with separate strong product brands, Amul invested in the mother brand. The payoff–Amul means quality across categories today!

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Conclusive Words

By converting commodity milk sold in unstable informal channels to year-round branded packaged sales, Amul not only made the farmer independent of intermediaries, but its integrated cooperative system passed on profits directly to improve farmer incomes and living standards. In the process, Amul created world-class facilities, unmatched distribution reach, and international quality certification, but most important of all – it made the power of shared prosperity and community upliftment the formula behind its magic marketing.