Nano ruckus has impacted Tata brand positively: Morgen Witzel

Trust, reliability and service to the community are some of the values associated with the name Tata, says Morgen Witzel, an honorary senior fellow at the University of Exeter Business School and a senior consultant with the Winthrop Group of business historians. Yet, internationally, awareness of the Tata brand remains patchy, Witzel, author of Tata - The Evolution of a Corporate Brand, told DNA in an interview. Excerpts:

What does Tata as a brand stand for?
There are three key values that seem to emerge from conversations I have had with people. One is the idea of trust. If you ask anyone within the Tata group what they think is the key element of the Tata brand, they will all say trust. The second notion is reliability — if we promise something, we will do it; if we promise something and it doesn’t really work out then we will do it again till we get it right. I talked to somebody who bought one of the first Nanos. He said one of the reasons he bought it was that he knew it was going to be reliable. The third, as we just discussed, is the service to the community.

Originally, service to India, but of course now Tata is a world wide corporation and they practise the same value of service wherever they go. Tata Consultancy Services in America, for example — the work they did when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. TCS Engineers played a vital role providing software to enable
emergency services for free.

Much of the Tatas’ philanthropy is essentially in continuance of the past. Take Jamshedpur, built almost 100 years back. They never ventured into building a city again. Or take the big institutions like Indian Institute of Science or Tata Institute of Social Sciences. These were also built a long time back. Has the Tata group’s social obligation come down over the years?
They are actually doing something big in terms of trying to make a difference, whether it is running programmes teaching people how to read, or rebuilding communities in South India after the Tsunami or doing environmental programmes, or helping farmers know what is the right time to sow their crops, which fertilisers are the best to use, etc.

There is such vast range of programmes. There hasn’t been another Jamshedpur, but maybe the time for Jamshedpurs is past, maybe that was something that was right in the 19th century and isn’t necessarily now.

There is no doubt that the commitment is still there. What I was basically asking is —- has the size of things they used to do for the society come down?
May be. But I won’t agree with it. There is a pretty big cancer hospital they are building in Calcutta. Also, the amount of effort that they brought in Kerala for the tsunami, that was huge in terms of investment.

“JRD himself compounded the problem by failing to name a successor until late in the day, which in turn gave rise to factionalism among senior managers and general uncertainity as to where the group is going,” you have written in the book. Isn’t Ratan Tata making the same mistake now?
I wouldn’t comment on that because that’s none of my business. Also because we can look back with hindsight and say that JRD Tata should have named a successor soon. We only know that with historical hindsight. In 15 or 20 years we will know whether Ratan Tata made the right decision, we don’t know now.

When Ratan Tata took over as the chairman of Tata Sons nearly two decades back, what challenges did he face with the Tata brand?
Ratan Tata felt there were two things. First, the brand itself did not have a firm identity. As he said “We had a reputation, we didn’t have brand.” And I think that is true because there was this great wealth of legacy that Tata had from the past and a huge amount of goodwill from everyone towards the group.

But there was not a consistent and coherent image across the group. If you look at the brand marks that were used at that point of time, every company had its own. There was a confusion and inconsistency of message and image which he felt had to be rectified. The second was to go international. He was convinced that Tata’s future in part lay outside India. And that meant translating the values of the Tata brand into the international markets. The first problem is pretty much solved. The second is still on going and will be ongoing for some time.

A lot of Tata companies do not use the Tata brand. What are the reasons for the same?
Some of the reasons are historical. Take the case of Taj. It has such strong brand of its own, it was felt that it would be wrong to superimpose the Tata brand on top of it. So if you look at Taj, it says in quite small that it is a Tata group company. But it is still pretty much the Taj brand.

Among the overseas brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea in the UK or the Eight O’Clock Coffee in the US, to have these very strong and existing consumer brands rebranded as Tata could cause confusion in the minds of the consumer. But look at Corus Steel. It is now Tata Steel Europe. It’s a decision which is taken very much on a case-to-case basis. It is not like General Electric where everything is called GE this and GE that.

What about a company like Titan? It’s a successful company. Why isn’t it called Tata Titan?
It’s a legacy. And don’t forget that the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation Ltd, owned by the Tamil Nadu government, is still the single largest shareholder. No one wants to offend the Tamil Nadu government. And Titan has developed a good brand of its own.

What about a brand like Trent?
I was told that when Trent was first established, Tata had never really gone into retail before and so it was perceived as a bit risky. So it was decided to kind of keep it on the edge. Trent, as you know, stands for Tata Retail Enterprises. And it took off and became a very successful brand in its own right. And there is again no reason to change it. At the moment it works, so why mess with it.

How is the brand perceived abroad in different parts of the world?
How long have you got? It’s a very simple question with a very complicated answer. It depends where in the world you are talking about. In South Africa, where they have done a lot of brand promotions, the awareness of the Tata brand is very strong and has very similar perceptions to those in India.

China is at the other end of the scale —- the understanding and knowledge of the Tata brand is very weak even amongst the government people, journalists and educators. Stop a hundred ordinary Chinese on the streets of Shanghai and ask them if they have heard of Tata and the answer will most certainly be ‘no’. In North America, Britain and parts of Western Europe, the perception is somewhere in between.

It also depends on whether we are talking about business-to-business side of Tata, like steel, chemicals and so on, or the consumer side, like Tata Motors. In the business-to-business side, the awareness is also very high. Almost anyone in the steel business is aware of Tata Steel. Anyone in the soda ash business is aware of Tata Chemicals. But much fewer people have heard about Tata’s consumer brands.

In the United Kingdom, there is a lot of awareness because of the lot of publicity surrounding Jaguar and Land Rover. Even to this day, few people know that Tata owns Tetley Tea, although Tetley is one of the largest tea brands in the UK. So, awareness of the Tata brand is very patchy: it depends on the sector or country that you are looking at and on whether you are talking about business-to-business or consumer.

Has the ruckus created in West Bengal because of the Nano controversy impacted the brand?
I see no evidence. There is some evidence that the impact has actually been positive. Possibly not in West Bengal, but some of the information that I have seen suggests people in other parts of the country have reacted positively. They saw the Tatas taking a strong and a principled stand and refusing to cave in. And I think that on the whole, the impact has been very, very little… if there has been an impact, it’s just marginally positive.