Married to the brand

Brand managers are the essence of humanity, the pride of civilisation, the salt of the earth. These amazing creatures from the dreamy world of marketing bring all their abundant energy to bear on the brands they manage.

Many years ago, I had the fortune of meeting the brand manager of a large multinational company’s leading detergent brand, Swipe. I’m ashamed to admit that before that day, I had not thought about detergents seriously. Yes, I had used them to wash my clothes — peer pressure at college forces you to do this from time to time — but I had done so without delving into their inner meaning.

“What does the Swipe detergent brand do?” the brand manager asked me when I entered his hallowed office.

“Washes clothes?” I ventured.

He snorted. “That’s like asking you what you do and you replying, ‘I breathe’.”

He was an intense man with curly hair that shook when he was excited, which happened when he talked about Swipe. Since he talked about little else, his hair bobbed up and down almost continuously. He was passionate about every aspect of the brand. With tears glistening his eyes, he told me how this wonderful entity had been conceived by the company’s forefathers and how it had created history, conquering millions of hearts in country after country before making its tumultuous entry into the Indian market.  Pinned at eye-level on a board in front of his desk was the Swipe Brand Manifesto — a noble statement describing Swipe’s function in this world, its personality and how it behaves in a crisis.

He ran me through a two-hour presentation, which had — among other things — testimonials from delighted Swipe consumers; charts showing Swipe’s performance over the years, across the 52 states, in hard and soft water and among people of varying educational qualifications; quotations by senior company officers (like “When times are good, invest in marketing Swipe; when times are bad, invest more”); and numerous advertisements used to promote the brand.

I soon understood why washing clothes merely scratched the surface of Swipe’s resume. The brand does much, much more. It brightens your outlook on life; solves your economic problems by facilitating your dream promotion; smoothens your rocky marriage; and enables your children to excel in school, not just in academics, but also in painting, debating and medium-distance bicycling.

However, it appeared that a dark villain was intent on thwarting Swipe’s honourable charter. This was the local competitor’s brand, Seema.

“Did you know,” the brand manager said in a quivering voice, “that Seema has 53% sulphate?”

I shook my head.

“Most regulatory bodies recommend a 40-46% range of sulphate in detergents. Yet these rascals have raised Seema’s sulphate content to 53%. How low can they stoop?”

Every brand invokes the same sense of passion in its brand manager. I realised this when, in an act of innocent hospitality, I once got my head bitten off.

“What will you drink?” I asked my guest, a sombre man in his thirties, “Can I get you rum and Coke?”

He raised his eyebrows an inch and said, “I am the brand manager of Pepsi.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said and similarly introduced myself, “Now coming back to your drink…?”

He raised his eyebrows some more, such that they disappeared into his hairline.

“I mean,” he said coldly, “that I don’t drink Coke. Never have. Never will.”

On another occasion I was having tea with some friends in a garden filled with flowers.

“These lilies,” I said, taking a sip of tea, “Delightful fragrance.”

“No!” snapped my friend. I jumped with shock, not expecting my innocuous remark to draw such an angry response, especially from this normally mild-mannered woman. She continued vehemently: “And awful taste too.”

I was puzzled: had she been plucking the flowers and eating them? Slowly the clouds of confusion were cleared: she had thought I was referring to the tea, in particular the Three Lilies brand and, as brand manager of its rival, had instinctively taken umbrage.

Another friend of mine was a brand manager in a cigarette company. When I met him a few years after college, I asked him how things were.

“Great!” he said. He went on to rave about the terrific brand he managed, how its tobacco leaves were procured (apparently very carefully), the technology that went into the manufacture of its filter (which included the use of some formidable glue) and the elegant manner it was distributed (in neat cardboard boxes).

“But tell me,” I said, “what about the recent movement to quit smoking and the increasing medical evidence that cigarettes are harmful to health? How has that affected your brand?”

“It’s like any other industry,” he said, “you take advantage of every positive opportunity and you minimise the impact of any bad news.”

“By bad news, you mean the fact that people are realising that cigarettes can kill?”

“Yes, what else?” he asked, puzzled.

Yes, as I said in the beginning, brand managers are the salt of the earth. But sometimes I wonder if perhaps the earth has too much salt.