LirilThe Freshness Soap

with the exciting freshness of limes

The famous Liril soap ad from 1980s featuring Karen Lunel. Every one remembers this one.

The ad was shot at Pambar falls (now known as Liril falls), in Kodaikanal. The water was freezing cold: and that explains Karen's expression in this ad.

Come alive with freshness

Many years ago, Liril came to us through the print ad’s featuring a gorgeous girl wearing a lime green bikini,

joyously splashing around in a waterfall. Then we saw it in movie theatres & TV for the next few decades. Karen

Lunel, the lady who cavorted under the Kodai waterfall modeled for Alyque Padamsee from Lintas, the great ad

maker working to launch HLL’s new soap and was photographed by Surendranath. Remember the simple jingle

tune (composed by Vanraj Bhatia) la, laaa laaa la..la la laaa??? …..Oh! How I wish I could see that old ad all

over again!!

The year was 1975. Karen did this after her accidental discovery in a boutique by the ad makers. The soap went

on to become a top seller and many a rumor killed off Karen at the waterfall by drowning, or was it a mobike or

plane accident somewhere? Anyway, she never died, but continued her work as an airhostess with Air India and

now lives with her husband in Bombay. I read also that the Lunel family was originally from Whitefield Bangalore,

had a funny egg shaped house there and were Jazz aficionados….

As Karen moved away, many girls moved in to take her place under the waterfall, and the

waterfall itself moved to jungles, deserts & glaciers (mercifully I have seen none of those morphs). As time went

by the green soap moved on to a blue mint (ad shot in Iceland?) version, then zesty Orange (with Priti Nair at

Lowe’s (Lintas had become Lowe’s) taking over the creative mantle from A Padamsee) and finally in 2005, 30

years later, the whole format changed to a daring one showing how bathing with a Liril soap can lead on to other

naughty matters…….I have seen that one, looks too firangi actually, I have heard the new sexy tune la era

ela… , it seems to be a rage out there in India, but I am still stuck with the simple old tune and Karen, no wonder

Karen’s ad ran for 12 years before the other girls came.

Many a girl rose to fame under the Liril waterfall, the most famous being Priety Zinta. Some others who did this

ad were Aneesha Dalal, Pooja Batra, Anjali Jathar

Hrishita Bhat, Tara Sharma, Ruchi Malhotra , Deepika Padukone and also a US-Mallu actress called Divya Palat

(Was she in the print ad?). Almost all of them ended up in the movies.

As you can imagine, this ad was & is one of the most written & talked about ad’s. There are plenty of mainstream

articles and blogs, showing how dear it is to the Indian of the 70’s through 90’s. Also, Padamsee had been

interviewed by so many about the how’s and why’s behind the pioneering bikini & waterfall ad. First test marketed

as a blue soap in the 70’s ( Padamsee wanted it to be blue and the Englishman Wooller suggested green to add

the freshness of lime), it finally got launched as the green marble textured soap, that we knew…created to make

bathing a ‘bindaas’ experience.

Let us see what Padamsee had to say, some lines are quite poignant, especially the fact about the

average Indian woman (this was discovered after extensive marketing research by HLL) He says - Take Liril soap.

It not only offers you freshness but offers you a sense of freedom. It is not just an ordinary bath. The girl in the

waterfall symbolises that the bathing experience can be bindaas and free. For the average Indian woman who is

surrounded by chaos, in-laws, husband, children, the ten minutes in the shower are her own, where she can day

dream. Now that was so compelling that the Liril ad has remained unchanged for 25 years by Hindustan Lever. They

tinkered with some ideas but then I noticed that they went back to the waterfall. These long term propositions, these

human values are embedded in the brand’s very soul. It overnight made Liril the top selling premium toilet soap in the

country and it has retained that leadership till today.

The ad was originally done in Khandala, but did not quite feel right and so was reshot down south – Padamsee says -

 The first time, the girl by the waterfall was photographed in Khandala, but something was missing.

The production team then ventured South - to the Kodaikanal waterfalls. When Karen Lunel, the water sprite, first

stepped into the pool, it was freezing cold. And, instead of the glittering Liril smile, all she could show were her

`chattering teeth'. But Karen, being a real sport, braced herself with a few shots of rum and gave a wonderful

performance. ``Did the naughtiness in her eyes reflect Liril or Old Monk,'' Padamsee jokes. BTW, the falls where this ad

was shot, was called Pambar falls, in Kodaikanal. It has since then been renamed/known as Liril falls!!

Incidentally, the fortunes of the soap started to decline once the girl and waterfall concept was changed.The story does not end here, to

boost sales; HLL tried the Indipop medium for support. The original tune was indeed catchy and it so got embedded into Shweta

Pandit’s ‘Main Zindagi hoon’ album, at least in a couple of tracks, when it was released in 2002.In a way I am thankful, because I got to

hear this great jingle again from that track. The video has Shweta singing the song, with water spray and all….sponsored of course by

Liril/HLL.

The orange campaign with Deepika – and The newer naughtier Liril ad is linked here for those interested…

with it storyline explained frame by frame. Has a South African model, it seems or was it the Pakistani girl Amna Mahmood? I don’t

know for sure, maybe Amna was only a print model.

Liril- The soap whose name is a Palindrome!!! Like the word Malayalam, spelt the same forward & backward…

"Liril" is a popular soap brand sold to a large degree in India, Asia and in few places of Europe. The advertisement of Liril was always significant with the presence of women taking bath and in rains or under water. A print advertisement of "Liril" soap of 1980's has chosen and redesigned considering the layout, content, color, message, typography and product range to be able to present in a leading lifestyle and Fashion magazine such as Vogue. Through lateral thinking skills it is well tried to reinterpret various elements of advertisement design and deliver to match today's design idiom.