MP Dr. Shashi Tharoor and his sister Shobha Tharoor – the first ‘Amul baby’ – were part of the event.
Pepper Trust Kochi, organisers of the Pepper Creative Awards, hosted a function to pay tribute to late Sylvester daCunha, Chairman, daCunha Communications and creator of the ‘Utterly Butterly’ Amul girl campaign. daCunha passed away in Mumbai on 21st June 2023.
Member of Parliament (MP) Dr. Shashi Tharoor and his sister Shobha Tharoor – the first ‘Amul baby’ to be featured in the campaign – were part of the event.
Delivering the keynote, the MP noted that the iconic ‘utterly butterly’ advertisements by Sylvester d’Cunha were ‘truly significant and unrivalled’.
Dr Tharoor noted that the Amul campaign was the longest running outdoor campaign in India. It was not only inspiring and clever, but also remained topical with a lot of pun and humour, noted.
The speaker recalled that daCunha had rejected as many as 712 photos of babies before finalising his own sister Shobha Tharoor as the first Amul Baby for the campaign, launched initially in black and white. When the agency changed the campaign to color, his younger sister Smitha Tharoor replaced Shobha, he noted.
Shobha Tharoor recalled walking up to famous filmmaker Shyam Benegal, who had photographed her for the first Amul campaign. When she introduced herself as the first ‘Amul baby’, she said, “he was so excited and hugged me and took me to meet his wife.“
BK Unnikrishnan, Vice President, Asianet News and Vishnu Nagapally, AGM – Marketing, Mathrubhumi were among those who delivered commemorative speeches in honour of daCunha.
From Pepper Trust, Chairman K Venugopal, Secretary G Sreenath, Treasurer R Madhava Menon and Trustees Dr T Vinay Kumar, US Kutty, PK Natesh, Lakshman Varma, Rajeev Menon, Chitra Prakash, Sandeep Nayar and Anil James were among those present.
