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Why Liril girl Karen Lunel was 'quite drunk' while shooting iconic ad and Alyque Padamsee was afraid she'd drown!

It's quite a story.

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Veteran ad maker and theatre personality Alyque Padamsee died Saturday at the age of 90. Padamsee was the former Chief Executive of advertising firm Lintas in India and helped it to become one of the top creative agencies in the country. He later became the regional coordinator for Lintas in South Asia.

He will be best remembered for iconic campaigns such as 'Lalitaji' for Surf, 'Cherry Charlie' for Cherry Blossom Shoe Polish, MRF's 'Muscle Man', the Liril girl in the waterfall and 'Hamara Bajaj' for the auto major.

He also played the role of Jinnah in the Richard Attenborough's award-winning film Gandhi" and was also awarded the Padma Shri award in 2000.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday condoled the demise of veteran ad maker and theatre personality Alyque Padamsee, describing him as a wonderful communicator.

The Liril Girl

However, many consider the Liril Girl Padamsee's pièce de résistance. Model of the advert, Karen Lunel didn’t know that stepping under a waterfall would change her life. Neither did Hindustan Lever, the creators of Liril, India’s first lime soap which became a raging hit and spawned a thousand imitations. 

There are times when a product can engage a viewer on an emotional level and Liril did by becoming a synonym for freedom and freshness.

The concept is an audio-visual treat and one of the most popular YouTube videos even today, 44 years after its conception.

The ad was created by Padamsee along with Lintas executive Neena Merchant.

The blueprint proved so successful that Liril barely changed the format, showing  just a girl playing in the water, diving, jumping and swimming under the waterfall and become a synonym for joie de vivre.

It became so popular that the Pambar falls in Kodaikanal became known as the Liril falls.

Lunel remained the face of Liril for over a decade – from 1974 to 1985, the longest for any Liril girl.

Karen Lunel recalled in 2009, how Padamsee would pump her up before shoots. She said: “Alyque Padamsee would make time to build me up before we left on a shoot. It brought out the best, just knowing you are valued. “

He had told Telegraph: “That gave me the idea that we could create a fantasy where she could escape to emotionally when she was having a bath. As a young boy, I loved watching Tarzan films and his girlfriend Jane always used to have a bath under a waterfall and come out looking so fresh. I said why don’t we adopt that idea because we were looking to market Liril from the freshness platform. Most of the soaps of the time focused on complexion, getting rid of pimples and so on. We wanted to talk about a bathing experience that creates a fresh new woman out of you. That’s when we decided on the girl under the waterfall concept.”

Quite drunk

Interestingly, they had to give Karen sips of brandy in between shots to keep her warm. He said: “What (producer) Kailash Surendranath did was to give Karen sips of brandy in between the shots to keep her warm. Every five seconds, we would pull her out and give her some brandy and put her back in. By the time we were five or six shots down, Karen was quite drunk, and we had to be careful that she didn’t drown! That was quite an experience.”

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