History of advertising in India

Answer 1

A sophisticated & professional industry called Indian Advertising

Indian Advertising starts with the hawkers calling out their wares right from the days when cities and markets first began

Shop front signages

From street side sellers to press ads

The first trademarks

Handbills distributed separately from the products

18th Century

Concrete advertising history begins with classified advertising

Ads appear for the first time in print in Hickey's Bengal Gazette. India's first newspaper (weekly).

Studios mark the beginning of advertising created in India (as opposed to imported from England) Studios set up for bold type, ornate fonts, more fancy, larger ads

Newspaper studios train the first generation of visualisers & illustrators

Major advertisers: Retailers like Spencer's, Army & Navy and Whiteaway & Laidlaw

Marketing promotions: Retailers' catalogues provided early example

Ads appear in newspapers in the form of lists of the latest merchandise from England

Patent medicines: The first brand as we know them today were a category of advertisers

Horlicks becomes the first 'malted milk' to be patented on 5th June 1883 (No. 278967).

The 1900s

1905

- B Dattaram & Co claims to be the oldest existing Indian agency in

Girgaum in Bombay

1912

- ITC (then Imperial Tobacco Co. Ltd.) launches Gold Flake

1920s

- Enter the first foreign owned ad agencies

- Gujarat Advertising and Indian Advertising set up

- Expatriate agencies emerge: Alliance Advertising, Tata Publicity

- LA Stronach's merges into today's Norvicson Advertising

- D J Keymer gives rise to Ogilvy & Mather and Clarion

1925

- LR Swami & Co, Madras

1926

- LA Stronach & Co (India) Pr. Ltd, Bombay starts

- Agency called National set up for American rather than British

Advertisers

- American importers hire Jagan Nath Jaini, then advertising manager

of Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore. National today is still run by

Jaini's family

- Beginning of multinational agencies

- J Walter Thompson (JWT) opened to service General Motors business

1928

- BOMAS Ltd (Formerly DJ Keymer & Co Ltd) set up

1929

- J Walter Thompson Co Pr. Ltd formed

Indian agencies, foreign advertising in the thirties

1931

- National Advertising Service Pr. Ltd. Bombay set up

- Universal Publicity Co, Calcutta formed

1934

- Venkatrao Sista opens Sista Advertising and Publicity Services as first

full service Indian agency

1935

- Indian Publicity Bureau Pr Ltd, Calcutta established

1936

- Krishna Publicity Co Pr. Ltd, Kanpur begins operations

- Studio Ratan Batra Pr. Ltd, Bombay established

- Indian Broadcasting Company becomes All India Radio (AIR)

1938

- Jayendra Publicity, Kolhapur started

1939

- Lever's advertising department launches Dalda - the first major

example of a brand and a marketing campaign specifically developed

for India

- The Press Syndicate Ltd, Bombay set up

Indianising advertisements in the forties

1940

- Navanitlal & Co., Ahmedabad set up

1941

- Lux signs Leela Chitnis as the first Indian film actress to endorse the

product

- Hindustan Thompson Associates (HTA), the current incarnation of

JWT, coins the Balanced Nourishment concept to make Horlicks

more relevant to India

- Green's Advertising Service Agents, Bombay formed

1943

- Advertising & Sales Promotion Co (ASP), Calcutta established

1944

- Dazzal, Bombay comes into existence

- Ranjit Sales & Publicity Pr. Ltd, Bombay started

1945

- Efficient Publicities Pr. Ltd, Madras set up

- Tom & Bay (Advertising) Pr. Ltd., Poona begins operations in India

1946

- Eastern Psychograph Pr. Ltd., Bombay set up

- Everest Advertising Pr. Ltd, Bombay established

1947

- Grant Advertising Inc, Bombay formed

- Swami Advertising Bureau, Sholapur started

1948

- RC Advertising Co, Bombay set up

- Phoenix Advertising Pr. Ltd, Calcutta formed

Corporate advertising in the fifties

1950s

- Radio Ceylon and Radio Goa become the media option

1951

- Vicks VapoRub: a rub for colds, causes ripples with its entry

in the balm market

1952

- Shantilal G Shah & Co, Bombay

1954

- Advertising Club, Mumbai set up

- Express Advertising Agency, Bombay

- India Publicity Co. Pr. Ltd., Calcutta

1956

- Aiyars Advertising & Marketing, Bombay

- Clarion Advertising Services Pr. Ltd, Calcutta

1957

- Vividh Bharati kicks off

1958

- Shree Advertising Agency, Bombay

1959

- Associated Publicity, Cuttack

Creative revolution in the sixties

1960

- Advertising Accessories, Trichur started

- Marketing Advertising Associates, Bombay set up

1961

- Industrial Advertising Agency, Bombay comes into existence

- Bal Mundkur quits BOMAS to set up Ulka the same year

1962

- India's television's first soap opera - Teesra Rasta enthralls

viewers

1963

- BOMAS changes names to SH Benson's

- Stronach's absorbed into Norvicson

- Lintas heading for uncertainty

- Levers toying with giving its brands to other agencies

- Nargis Wadia sets up Interpub

- Wills Filter Tipped cigarettes launched and positioned as made for

each other, filter and tobacco match

1965

- Kersey Katrak sets up Mass Communication and Marketing (MCM)

1966

- Government persuaded to open up the broadcast media

- Ayaz Peerbhoy sets up Marketing and Advertising Associates (MAA)

1967

- First commercial appears on Vividh Bharati

1968

- Nari Hira sets up Creative Unit

- India wins the bid for the Asian Advertising Congress

1969

- Sylvester daCunha left Stronach's to run ASP; later sets up

daCunha Associates

1970

- Frank Simoes sets up Frank Simoes Associates

The problematic seventies

1970-1978

- National Readership Studies provided relevant data on

consumers' reading habits

1970

- Concept of commercial programming accepted by All India Radio

- Hasan Rezavi gives the very first spot on Radio Ceylon

1971

- Benson's undergo change in name to Ogilvy, Benson & Mather

1972

- Western Outdoor Advertising Pvt Ltd (WOAPL) introduces first

closed circuit TV (CCT) in the country at the race course in

Mumbai

1973

- RK Swamy/BBDO established

1974

- MCM goes out of business

- Arun Nanda & Ajit Balakrishnan set up Rediffusion

1975

- Ravi Gupta sets up Trikaya Grey

1976

- Commercial Television initiated

1978

- First television commercial seen

1979

- Ogilvy, Benson & Mather's name changes to Ogilvy & Mather

Glued to the television in the eighties

1980

- Mudra Communications Ltd set up

- King-sized Virginia filter cigarette enters market with brand name

of 'Charms'

1981

- Network, associate of UTV, pioneers Cable Television in India

1982

- The biggest milestone in television was the Asiad '82 when

television turned to colour transmission

- Bombay Dyeing becomes the first colour TV ad

- 13th Asian Advertising Congress in New Delhi

- Media planning gets a boost

1983

- Maggi Noodles launched to become an overnight success

- Canco Advertising Pvt. Ltd. founded

- Manohar Shyam Joshi's Hum Log makes commercial television

come alive

- Mudra sponsors first commercial telecast of a major sporting event

with the India-West Indies series

1984

- Hum Log, Doordarshan's first soap opera in the colour era is

born

- Viewers still remember the sponsor (Vicco) of Yeh Jo Hai

Zindagi!

1985

- Mudra makes India's first telefilm, Janam

1985-86

- 915 new brands of products and services appearing on the Indian

Market

1986

- Sananda is born on July 31. The Bengali magazine stupefies India

by selling 75,000 copies within three hours of appearing on the

newsstands.

- Mudra Communications creates India's first folk-history TV

serial Buniyaad. Shown on DD, it becomes the first of the

mega soaps

- Price quality positioning of Nirma detergent cakes boost sales

1988

- AAAI's Premnarayan Award instituted

1989

- Advertising Club Bombay begins a biennial seminar called

'Advertising that Works'

- Advertising & Marketing (A&M) magazine launched

Tech savvy in the nineties

1990

- Marks the beginning of new medium Internet

- Agencies open new media shops; go virtual with websites and

Internet advertising

- Brand Equity (magazine) of The Economic Times is born

1991

- First India-targetted satellite channel, Zee TV starts broadcast

- Close on the throes of the Gulf War enters STAR (Satellite

Transmission for Asia Region)

1992

- Spectrum, publisher of A&M, constitutes its own award known as

'A&M Awards'

- Scribes and media planners credit The Bold And The Beautiful

serial on STAR Plus channel as a soap that started the cultural

invasion

1993

- India's only advertising school, MICA (Mudra Institute of

Communications Ahmedabad), is born

- Tara on Zee TV becomes India's first female-centric soap

1995

- Advertising Club of Bombay calls its awards as Abby

- Country's first brand consulting firm, SABRE (Strategic Advantage for

Brand Equity) begins operations

1996

- The ad fraternity hits big time for the first time by bagging three

awards at the 43rd International Advertising Festival, Cannes

- Sun TV becomes the first regional TV channel to go live 24 hours

a day on all days of the week

1997

- Media boom with the growth of cable and satellite; print medium

sees an increase in titles, especially in specialised areas

- Government turns towards professional advertising in the private

sector for its VDIS campaigns

- Army resorts to the services of private sector agencies

- Advertising on the Internet gains popularity

- Equitor Consulting becomes the only independent brand consultancy

company in the country

- Several exercises in changing corporate identity

- For the first time ever, Indians stand the chance of winning the $ 1-

million booty being offered by Gillette as part of its Football World

Cup promo 1998

- Events assume important role in marketing mix

- Rise of software TV producers banking on ad industry talent

- Reinventing of cinema -advertising through cinema begins

1998

- Lintas becomes Ammirati Puri Lintas (APL)

1999

- B2B site agencyfaqs.com launched on September 28, 1999

- The Advertising Club Bombay announces the AdWorks Trophy

In the new millennium

2000

- Mudra launches magindia.com - India's first advertising and marketing

Gallery

- Lintas merges with Lowe Group to become Lowe Lintas and Partners

(LLP)

- bigideasunlimited.com - a portal offering free and fee ideas for money

launched by Alyque Padamsee and Sam Mathews

- Game Shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati become a rage; media buying

industry is bullish on KBC

- Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi marks the return of family-

oriented soap on TV

- French advertising major Publicis acquires Maadhyam

2001

- Trikaya Grey becomes Grey Worldwide

- Bharti's Rs 2.75-crore corporate TV commercial, where a baby

girl is born in a football stadium, becomes the most expensive

campaign of the year

2002

- Lowe Lintas & Partners rechristened Lowe Worldwide

- For the first time in the history of HTA, a new post of president is

created. Kamal Oberoi is appointed as the first president of HTA