Vintage advertisements featuring Indian cricketers
COVID has got locked up in our rooms and bedrooms for the longest time that cohorts of Gen X, Y, Z have ever experienced! Never was there a virus and never were there consequences like this!
I will not spend too much time thinking about the COVID days because they are here and I know that you have had enough reading articles about them, attending webinars around them, and discussing it in your drawing rooms.
Vintage Advertisements: Why the nostalgia?
To cut the story short, starting from March 2020 when COVID lockdown started in India till this day, it’s been more than 1.5 years and I have watched just one movie! Coming from a movie buff who doesn’t mind watching every movie multiple times, that should be counted as a big deal!
So, one fine day, all of us teammates decided to head out for a team lunch and plans changed, destinations changed, motives changed and there we were in Noida mall grabbing popcorn while watching the movie 83 based on real behind the scenes story of India winning the Prudential World Cup in London.
Yeah… ☝️☝️☝️ he was playing the role of Kapil Dev, the world cup winning captain! Look at him, has something gotten into him or is he always like that??? I would like to believe that he is excited about featuring in my blog post huh!
Anyways, for those who dont know that I and my generation are crazy for cricket! We grew up listening to tales of Indian cricketing fairytales of Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar while watch Sachin Tendulkar smash the bowlers over the covers for a four!
In effect, this movie triggered up a lot of nostalgia in me and I checked out all the matches of the 1983 World cup, matches where India defeated Pakistan, Sachin’s memorable innings of 143 against Australia in Dubai etc.
While checking out all these, I came across a set of vintage advertisements featuring Indian Cricketers in the decades gone by. These advertisements were absolutely a Gold treasure! Furthermore, if you go back in time when India won the 1983 World cup, as shown in the movie, the Indian team was lacking funds, leave alone individual cricketers having opportunities to endorse brands. Slowly but steadily, brands started reaching Indian national team and the opportunities trickled down to the players too…
Kapil Dev – The first Personality based Brand of Indian cricket
In late 1980’s, Kapil Dev went on to become a big brand with brands like Boost where he says the Golden words “Boost is the secret of my energy”
While the tagline of Palmolive that later stuck on to my generations’ mind was “Palmolive daa jawaab nahin”. It wore the trademark voice of Kapil Dev and I remember the brand recall of the tagline was enormous!
Palmolive daa jawaab nahin
Kapil Dev in Palmolive ad
Later during his career, two superstars, Kapil Dev and teenage sensation Sachin Tendulkar represented India at the highest level! Indian brands couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity! Boost being a youth facing brand roped both of them in a wonderfully created advertisement:
The charming Sunil Gavaskar
Who can forget Sunil Gavaskar’s vintage advertisements in Dinesh suitings having the tagline “Take the world in your stride… Dinesh”. Gavaskar flaunting the charming look accompanied by an eye candy model, thereby, steering the Indian cricket into the realm of style and sophistication!
Sachin had to wait till 2011 to win the world cup however, he had become a sensation by the late 1980’s. There were a few adorable vintage advertisements featuring other 1983 World cup winners like the Thums up advertisement featuring Sunil Gavaskar, Sandeep Patil, and Ravi Shastri:
Though this post was originally dedicated to Vintage advertisements featuring 1983 World cup winning Indian cricket team, I would indulge with you a little bit more to show you 3 more advertisements that i’m sure you would love!
A few more Not-so Vintage Advertisements
One of the most adorable Pepsi advertisements of the 1990’s was the one featuring the 2 mumbai batting sensations and who were known as the very best of friends- Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli. Together, they held the world record for the biggest batting partnership in First class cricket. Here they are seen fighting over Pepsi while Azharuddin (then captain of the team) gets the better of them:
This advertisement by SRK made the Pepsi tagline “Yeh dil maange more” a nationwide hit! – A perfect case study for a branding enthusiast like me!
In the advertisement that follows, you gotta tell me if Rahul Dravid (jammy) does a good job dressing up as a girl:
This is one of the most popular advertisements of the time:
Starting from the late 1990′, Indian cricket rose to new heights and saw a slurry of individual brand endorsements with MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, and others ruling the TV screens!
I hope you like the compilation of the TV advertisements and please feel free to add more in the comments section below
Sources:
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/87o27z/1981_kapil_dev_in_palmolive_shave_cream/
These are so cool! I know nothing about cricket to be honest but the posters are awesome.
This is an interesting and informative read for me. I did not know about cricket. Thanks for sharing with me.
Wow, those are so cool! I love it.
I love seeing old advertisements like this!
These are so incredibly cool to see.
Old advertisements are always so fun to look at! These are really neat to see!
Cricket has become a global sport and is particularly big in India. And the Indian cricket team is not doing too badly at the moment in Test Match Cricket.
So I can imagine people wanting to use the charm of Indian cricketers for their adverts. What I am not too sure about though is using vintage advertisements.
Great post 🙂
I do not know about cricket but this is something news and interesting for me to read. Anything in the 80s is my favorite.