Loyalty programme | A brand is a lot more than a trade name

Malavika R. Harita, CEO of Saatchi Focus Network, spent the first six years of her career at HMT Watches. She was fixated on the brand. Though she moved on from the company, the love story continued. Her mother still wears the HMT watch she gifted her when she got her first salary in 1982. But now Harita looks depressed when she hears about HMT, as an inept management has destroyed the iconic brand and the company is on the verge of a shutdown.

So what is it that makes people like brands? Harita is an expert in branding, who knows how brands are created as a marketing tool. Still, she is not spared from its influence. Harish Bijoor, CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults, likens brands to human beings, who take birth, grow, flourish, live, die and eventually decay. Even iconic brands, with whom we have grown up, follow the pattern.

Many brands that have a bit of history attached to its name have become a thing of the past. The iconic magazine Reader's Digest recently filed for bankruptcy. Legendary music company HMV has faded into oblivion. Earlier last year, Eastman Kodak, which revolutionised photography, filed for bankruptcy. Vimal, which was at the forefront of the textile revolution in India, was shut down by Reliance Industries earlier this year. Dunlop Tyres also shut operations recently.

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Bidding a sentimental farewell to a fashionable brand

As RIL puts Vimal brand on the block, Ramanujam Sridhar speaks about his impressions and memories of the iconic brand.

IT WAS the summer of 1987, the city Ahmedabad, the venue, Mudra’s corporate office where I had been called for an interview for the job of branch manager of the agency’s Bengaluru office which was to be set up by the incumbent.

Mudra was not like any casual and informal advertising agencies of those days. It had an imposing corporate office and there was an aura around AG Krishnamurthy, the chairperson and managing director whom I had to meet. I walked into his huge cabin, the size of a basketball court only to be questioned by the gum-chewing Krishnamurthy “So why do you want to join Mudra?” (I later realised that he was trying to kick the smoking habit).

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