"Whenever we used to conduct focus groups among consumers, respondents would invariably start by talking about the Onida Devil. This was despite the fact that the Devil was not part of our communication for the last five-six years," chuckles V Chandramouli, vice-president, marketing, sales and service, Mirc Electronics. "We would dig and probe and analyse in the hope of finding some uniquely relevant idea for the Onida brand - while all along, consumers were subliminally reminding us about the power of the Onida Devil. Somehow, we simply chose to disregard it all these years."

Then suddenly, somewhere, the penny dropped. The realisation that an out-of-circulation Devil still packed a decent wallop filtered in. The upshot is that the green, two-horned advertising icon that first made its appearance in the early eighties has been pulled out of the freezer to reprise its role as the guardian angel of Onida, the flagship durables brand of the Rs 1,000-crore Mirc Electronics. The Devil has acquired a new lease of life in the form of two new television commercials for the brand�s colour televisions (CTV), and Chandramouli informs that hereafter, the Devil will feature in all Onida communication. ... more