Great brands, it is said, belong in the canvas of life, not the quadrangle of the marketplace, and that definitely applies to the Tata brand. Therefore, when I picked up Morgan Witzel’s book Tata The Evolution of a Corporate Brand, I expected to get a lot of “eureka” moments about why and how the Tata brand had managed to remain timeless, ageless, and stellar through all the changes from the days of Lord Curzon and Jamsetji, to post-liberalisation India and Ratan Tata. I also expected to learn a lot from the comparisons such a book would make between the journey of the Tata brand and other iconic brands of the same era as well as new challenger brands that came along. I looked forward to an insightful and intertwined account of the changes in the canvas of life in India and how the Tata brand adapted to it, interacted with it. Finally, I expected my heart and soul to be touched and awed the way it was when I saw Zafar Hai’s film on the Tatas; and I expected my thinking about corporate branding to be greatly enhanced because of the richness of the case study.
I must confess to being disappointed. To be fair, the book offers a very well-researched business history of the Tata group and a pretty good description of its DNA, illustrated with several examples. It will be of great value to foreign readers, who know the Tatas by their acquisitions but not by their heritage and values. To most of us who are familiar with Indian business, however, much of this is known and often written about. The book also competently chronicles the challenges faced by the corporate brand over the years, how they were dealt with, and describes in detail the various internal and external brand-building activities of the group and individual companies over the years. Brand theory discussions are, however, fairly basic, like stating that individual company brands do add to the corporate brand perception. What I missed most in the book was depth. The text has inviting bold statements like “Tata’s reputation for incorruptibility has made the group enemies too... politicians who ask for bribes are refused and tend not to regard the Tatas with much favour” and “those companies that use the Tata corporate brand now share a common identity even while maintaining their uniqueness”. But the discussion that follows is left at surface elaboration.
The author, in his preface, states that “anyone with an interest in corporate branding will find this case study of some use... Seeing what the Tata group has done — or not done — could help answer a few more general questions about what corporate brands are, and how they work”. In the course of my consulting, I have had large, successful Indian companies wanting to do precisely that. The book does not, however, throw much light on frequently asked questions like: How hard and complicated was it and what exactly needed to be done to put the system in place where group companies financially contributed to the Tata brand and agreed to a set of rules on how it would be used? What was the kind of crisis management thinking they went through when events like Tata Finance or Singur happened? How did they think about the brand risk of setting up shop in Gujarat at the request of a chief minister whose own brand perceptions were quite different from the Tatas? What is the learning the Tatas have had about stretching one brand across so many different businesses? Did Tanishq and Titan have the best of both worlds, by not directly carrying the Tata name but claiming group membership?
There is, however, one huge takeaway that I have from Ram Charan’s foreword, which has given me the “eureka” moment and significantly changed the way I think about corporate brands. He contrasts the Tatas to Rockefeller, Ford, Gates and so on who used their business fortune to launch charitable foundations supporting specific social causes. “What makes Tata different is that its societal work is a key part of its total mission... their (individual Tata companies) purpose is truly societal, this societal purpose is instrumental to serve the economic aspects of the organisation as well... The group has resolved once and for all, through its financial and market performance, that having a societal purpose does not in any way reduce its intensity to compete and win... the societal purpose of Tata is reflected in the Tata brand, and it is not just a PR stunt, it is real.” Read all the examples given in the book through this lens — and the magic of the Tata brand will be revealed. Beyond the unhelpful research playback of “Tata name stands for trust”, we finally understand why it endures, and why we Indians have an eternal love affair with the brand whose boss will take a hit on the P&L because “a promise is a promise”.
The reviewer is an independent market strategy consultant and author of We Are Like That Only — Understanding the logic of Consumer India
TATA
The Evolution of a Corporate Brand
Morgan Witzel
Penguin Books India
Pages 256; Rs 599
