Perennial marketing lessons from classic brands

Branded in History: Fresh Marketing Lessons from Vintage Brands

Author: Ramya Ramamurthy

Publisher:  Hachette

Pages: 309

Price: Rs 499

You may probably be knowing enough about Rabindranath Tagore, but do you know that the Nobel Laureate whole-heartedly endorsed a soap brand? Or that the prime minister of the former state of Bhavnagar (now in the state of Gujarat) partnered with a Vaidya (Zandu) to create one of the iconic and first companies — Zandu Pharmaceuticals Works Limited — to go public? 

Have you watched Lekh Tandon-directed Hindi movie Agar Tum Na Hote (1983)? Not only did Rajesh Khanna return to stardom with it, but he is also seen as Emami’s managing director in the movie. Do you know that it was the first in-film advertisement by a brand?

Such is the charm of a few words and subtle promotional techniques that create an everlasting image in the minds of potential buyers and non-buyers. This is why advertisements not only inspire purchase, but they also commit an unsaid promise to customers; they represent a brand, its ethos and its culture. In an increasingly digitalised world, however, we take this connecting thread for granted. “Self-care” seems to be a marketing buzzword and impulse-buying a habit most of us recognise, but one wonders what the market was like in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Or was there one, as we understand it today? How did, and in what language, then did these brands find fit to communicate with the public?

Author, documentary filmmaker, and broadcast journalist Ramya Ramamurthy studied classic brands, most of which continue to grow strongly in the present commercial landscape, for her latest book Branded in History: Fresh Marketing Lessons from Vintage Brands.

From beauty products to automobiles and pharmaceuticals to heavy industries, in 11 engaging chapters, she assesses and documents how business conglomerates, their brands, and their marketing efforts broke new ground “in an environment of marketing resource scarcity”. Reading this exceptional work, one gets to know how during the years of struggle for independence from the British Raj, “building a sales pitch around the idea of the ‘pleasure principle’ was hardly an option”, yet these entrepreneurs were smart enough to balance exuding nationalistic sentiments and building their brand image around smart packaging and consistent messaging.

A few examples include Godrej introducing cross promotion well ahead of its time. On their soap covers, the company marketed their other products: Safes and locks. Along with Burjor P Godrej, the founder Ardeshir Godrej, also employed the over-abused word in business-speak today: Standardisation. Godrej “turned the art of soap-making into a science by standardising the process through the introduction of saponification”.

“Palmolive used Devika Rani and Sulochana in the years leading up to 1941; Lever had Leela Chitnis and Shobana Samarth for Lux. By 1939, Mysore Sandal Soap was advocating that ‘beauty is not a luxury but a social necessity’,” notes Ms Ramamurthy in the chapter on beauty products.

It begs a question then, a point that Douglas E Haynes makes in the book: When people had “such little disposable income”, how did these businesspeople attract and convince them to spend whatever little they earned to buy their products?  Ms Ramamurthy concludes that no wonder some products were targeted to attract “the attention of the British sahib and memsahib”, others used the clarion call of the time: To support anything Swadeshi, homegrown.

Brand strategist and former executive director and CEO of the FCB Ulka Group, Ambi Parameswaran, whom the author interviewed for the book, says: “What we call modern market research is something which a lot of these entrepreneurs used to intuitively practise. They may not have had a marketing agency or a questionnaire or focus groups, but you can walk into a shop, just hang around there and observe consumers.” Not only that, but they also tweaked “narrative as per the requirements of the time” as Kiran Khalap notes in the case of brands like Horlicks or Parle-G.

But not all branding efforts were well received by experts. One of the critiques one finds in the book is of Tatas, who pushed nationalist agenda in their verbose ads. Dilip Simeon says, “In the 1930s, however, Tata management were closer to the colonial administration than to the nationalists” (he was referring to worker unions’ demand for better pay between 1924 and 1928, which was accepted but not implemented.)

For its insights, engaging language, and meticulous weaving of interviews and archives into the narrative, 

Ms Ramamurthy deserves all the accolades for this spellbinding work. Had it not been for this book, I’d have never known that there was an implicit “link between caste notions of purity, pollution, and the use of soap” back in the day (use of vegetable oils was favoured against animal fat.) Or that the famous brand “Dalda’ was “Dada”.

The book stokes nostalgia to an extent that even its cover is a creative spin-off of a product’s image. From a young reader to an established brand strategist, this book is a must read.
 

The reviewer is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. @writerly_life