Short stories about successful brands

From Wagh Bakri to Bleeding Madras - this book tells the stories of the emotions that fuelled some of India's most successful brands

Brief Case: How Brands Create Desire, Trust and Culture

By Sanjay Arora

Published by Penguin

312 pages ₹399

 Building a brand is part rational selling, part emotional selling, and part great storytelling. Most successful brands have interesting back stories and use them well. There is the famous story of Jamsetji Tata being denied entrance to the whites-only Watson’s Hotel; he went and built a hotel that outlasted Watson’s — the iconic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel at Colaba. Karsanbhai Patel, a chemist working in Ahmedabad, was encouraged to create an economical washing powder after seeing his family trying to economise on the use of expensive detergent; that led to the creation of Nirma. Then there is the story about milk producers getting under a co-operative union to take on a British brand — and Amul was born. I was reminded of all these stories as I went through Brief Case: How Brands Create Desire, Trust & Culture by Sanjay Arora.

 

First, a bit about the author. He is not a big-city branding guru. He lives in Nagpur and runs an ad agency (Shells Advertising) that is today the leading ad agency of central India. He also has an enviable following on Instagram. He has over a million followers and his reels have been viewed by an amazing 25 million-plus times. I am sure readers of this newspaper have received forwards of his highly engaging reels. He posts one reel every day and each is based on a trivia, about brands, consumers, culture, books and so on.

 

It was, therefore, with great excitement that I picked up Brief Case and I was not disappointed. He has presented short stories about 40 brands. Some of the stories would be familiar to most marketing professionals: Dove, Chik, FedEx, Heinz, Patagonia, Spotify, to name a few. But there were quite a few brand stories that were new to this reviewer.

 

Let me start with one, simply because it is about the city in which I grew up — Madras or Chennai as it is known now. How many of you have heard of the brand or the cloth called “Bleeding Madras”? It is a particular type of cloth made with vegetable dyes that “bleeds” as you wash it. When Brooks Brothers launched it, the product tanked and the company was sued. But the manufacturers had faith in the product and figured out how to turn the so-called weakness into a strength. The campaign that followed made a virtue out of the weakness: “Guaranteed to Bleed” said the headline of the ad. The product took off. I remember hearing the term “Bleeding Madras” during my school days and the story was nostalgic for me.

 

Or the story behind the creation of the brand Fanta, again a childhood favourite of mine. I did not know that Fanta was created by The Coca-Cola Company in Germany during World War II. Why? Simply because they could not import Coke essence due to war time restrictions. The local company concocted a cloudy drink made with left over fruit and starch called “Fantasticque”.  After the war the brand languished till yet another European country was looking for an interesting brand name to launch a real orange drink. Fanta was reborn. Unlike Coke, which is made the same way across the world, Fanta takes on a local avatar and is sold in a multitude of flavours.

 

Wagh Bakri tea is one of the largest-selling tea brands in western India. Did you know that its brand name was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings of peaceful collaboration or co-existence — tea so good that a “Wagh” (tiger) and a “Bakri” (goat) can enjoy it together!

 

Afghan Snow used to be a very popular cosmetic brand in the 1960s. I did not know that its name was suggested by the King of Afghanistan (King Amanullah). He took a look at the unnamed white cream that was offered by Ebrahim Patanwala, said that it reminded him of the pure snow of his homeland. Afghan Snow was born (circa 1919).

 

Of the 40 brands presented, half of them are global brands and half are brands born or created in India. There are many old brands such as ParleG and Kurkure and some new ones such as Dolo 650.

 

Given the compact nature of the brand stories presented so well in the book, the purpose of the book is not to be a go-to-book on brand marketing but to be a trigger for aspiring brand managers and brand creators. In that regard this is a good addition to the growing library of books on Indian brands.

The reviewer is a best-selling author of 12 books. His latest is the tenth anniversary edition of Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles — India Through 60 Years of Advertising