One Land, One Billion Minds: Insights on Branding in India
Volume 18, Number 4 Article by Vijay Vancheswar December, 2006
One Land, One Billion Minds: Insights on Branding in India : By Ramanujam Sridhar, 2006, Productivity and Quality Publishing, Chennai, pp 400. :
Ramanujam Sridhar’s book,’ One Land One Billion Minds, Insights on Branding in India', makes for both absorbing and delightful reading. Absorbing, because of its exhaustive coverage of the varied functions and aspects of corporate and branding issues, organisational and marketing communications. Delightful, because of its ability to engage the reader with interesting and relevant examples and asides, laced with a liberal dose of humour. And for a vast majority of Indian readers who think, breathe and eat cricket, the book will bring back many nostalgic memories of this glorious game. Sridhar’s unabashed love and fascination for the game finds liberal expression throughout the book, adding life and bounce to the contents.
Beginning with his own passion for advertising and his foray into the profession, Sridhar carefully crafts out a flow of topics to highlight the importance of branding in its totality. The selection of topics and their analysis clearly indicates clarity of purpose, from which flows insight. The emphasis is on knowing the customer before anything else – ‘The Customer is king, not a moron, but your wife – as the legendary David Ogilvy put it. In this context, Sridhar’s examples to highlight how the campaigns for Dalmia Cement and Titan were distinctive as against that of Kellogg’s are indeed pertinent and noteworthy. A study of key influencer segments of children, friends and associates adds depth and scope to the all important aspect of understanding the consumer’s psyche and behaviour.
The importance of execution and attention to detailing against the backdrop of good intent gets its rightful emphasis across all chapters. Extensive references to authorities on branding, advertising and communication is another hallmark of the book. The Howard Schulz (Chairman and CEO, Starbucks Coffee) quote, ‘A brand has to feel like a friend’, effectively captures the tone and flavour of the various aspects dealt with in the book: launching brands, brand management, techno-branding, advertising, public relations, etc. In other words, the importance of executing things innovatively, differently and interestingly has been well brought out, through numerous examples of successful product launches and concept introductions. The successful launching of the two-wheeler brand ‘Victor’ by the well known South Indian company TVS, through positive experiential driving trials and one-on-one promotions, through well trained dealer networks and appropriate celebrity endorsements is used as an example to highlight the need to evaluate, strategise and fit the demands of the brand with the right celebrity personality. The use of a cricket icon such as Sachin Tendulkar whose understated personality alongside his acknowledged traits of hard work, performance and humility, matched TVS’s own value attributes. The reference to seriously revisiting the choice of celebrities from the home-grown to outside the shores of the country is a very relevant observation. The choice of Brett Lee for the successful launch of the Timex Series of watches is an example that drives home the point of ‘value for money’ as against ‘value at any cost’.
Many more equally interesting and pertinent examples lace the pages of the book to support the well treated and varied subjects on advertising and public relations. The interview with the highly regarded Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys, Narayana Murthy is a highlight of the book. It emphasises and brings home the enduring strengths that commitment to values of integrity, customer sensitivity, transparency and ethics generates for organisations in the long haul.
As rightly pointed out by Sridhar, what the advertising industry needs today are champions and leaders (Trumpeter Swans, to use the term coined by David Ogilvy) of the stature of Narayana Murthy, who through their actions elevate the reputation and standing of the industry and the brands that they represent by several notches. More importantly, these champions can create the right platform for ‘generation next’ to consider and contribute to the growth in the exciting field of advertising, communications and public relations.
Among the many topics that the book covers, the chapter on Public Relations is significant in more ways than one. Given the still nascent approach to the subject in the country, there is a pressing need for corporate houses to understand the nuances of media relations and reputation enhancement exercises. Perhaps the author could have dwelt a little on the welcome new trend of having in-house senior professional capabilities as a single window interface with the external world as well as for internal communications. As common in transnational corporations, this resource team fine-tunes and arrives at the ‘how to communicate’ part after collating the ‘what to communicate’ issues across the organisation. While external agencies and advisories support this team, large corporations have realised the value of a dedicated team to handle the demands of media, investor, perception and corporate reputation exercises besides internal communications – the more so because the media, be it the dailies, magazines or the television channels, prefer to directly interface with a dedicated contact in an organisation. In line with international trends, we therefore find Indian organisations today terming this function as ‘corporate communications’ rather than the much misunderstood term of ‘public relations’ which often gets ignobly linked with ’wining, dining and greasing’! Mercifully, the Indian media has evolved and today’s journalists are by and large professional, hungry for news and well cued onto the industry sectors that they deal with. The pertinent issues of organisations either informing before performing and thereby losing credibility, or being extremely low key and media shy, are some of the challenges that an in-house resource professional has to address though education and awareness building programmes and periodic research cum feedback exercises conducted through professional research houses.
Yet another timely and relevant topic that the book addresses is that of crisis management. Time and again, organisations have been found wanting in preparedness to handle the sudden and the unexpected, merely 'reacting' to such situations. The example of the successful management of the ‘Tylenol’ crisis by Johnson and Johnson is well brought out in the book, to illustrate the importance of an effective PR strategy that is backed with preparedness. Similarly, the subject of internal communications is dealt with impressively and to effect.
The chapter on inspiring thought leaders of the industry provides a fitting finale to a comprehensive and incisive coverage of topics on branding and communications. This clearly brings out the importance and need for top management to ‘walk and demonstrate their talk’ in order to set forth its unique, distinguishing and strong culture. The book ends with an emphasis on the need for adapting and delivering to the new age consumers, who are forever seeking change in the midst of shrinking time spans. Concepts of more from less, branding as a financial asset, the innovative use of new age media such as the web and the competitive advantage of new ideas supported by a well thought out strategy leave the reader with much food for thought.
In sum, One Land, One Billion Minds is an excellent, valuable and enjoyable addition to one’s collection of books on advertising and communications. Brand managers, advertising professionals and custodians of corporate image and reputation, public relations practitioners and marketing consultants will surely gain some insights from a close reading this quality book.
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