Curious Marketer - Harish Bhat - Review

Harish Bhat, a brand custodian for Tata Sons, has held diverse roles within the organization for over 3 decades, primarily focused on the marketing aspect of a respective business line. The Curious Marketer is a collection of various articles written for established newspapers for many years during his senior management stint with Tata group. All the articles have a marketing perspective and the insights derived from a curious observation of customer behavior. An observation of customer response which can arise either from proactive or reactive positioning of brands in the market. 

From a proactive positioning standpoint, Lifebuoy’s marketing stint during 2013 Kumbh Mela offers a breakout perspective, the choice of occasion is by far the largest human gathering in the world with a turnout of 12 crore. An initiative ‘Lifebuoy se haath dhoye kya?’ was stamped on 2.5 million hot rotis toasting over heated tawa from a collection of 100 dhabas during the mela. It served as an excellent brand impression at exactly the right point in time, an indication to wash hands right before touching the food. The campaign reached an estimated 5 million devotees and increased Lifebuoy’s market share by 3 times. A paltry 30 lakh in marketing expense resulted in 11 crore of sales, thereby providing an impressive ROI of 36 times. 

Back in the early 20th century, Coca-Cola faced a plethora of imitator brands, calling themselves as Koca-Nola and other closely mimicking names to cannibalize the original brand's market share. Legal battles were long, many and ineffective due to the widespread array of imitator brands, needless to say that they had a gala time making money at the cost of Coca-Cola. In 1916, a creative approach of redesigning the regular model of bottle to contour shaped ones changed the game overwhelmingly in favour of Coca-Cola. A design patent was duly sought and the imitators' brands vanished as a consequence. The above two examples show how much of an impact can be made by out of the box thought processes and it's effective implementation.

Brands take impersonation or imitation seriously which is grounded on fair business practices. About three decades back,  the International Olympic Committee (IOC) unsuccessfully sued Audi for copyright infringement. When their respective logos are juxtaposed, it’s bound to give an impression that one with five interlaced rings at two levels of intersection and the other with four interlaced rings at a single level of intersection, can be termed as similar. But why was the IOC unsuccessful in its legal pursuit? I will leave that to the curiosity of honorary patrons of my blog. 

Broader point to note, curves and circles have an implicit interpretation of safety while sharp edges evoke a sense of fear. Brain image studies have shown evidence pertaining to the given presumption that viewing sharp objects activate areas of the brain that evoke fear. Maybe that could be the prime reason behind Dettol’s logo of downward facing sword within a circle, indicating at a subliminal level that the product is safe and protects a consumer. 

There were many more interesting tidbits of insights and information covered through the collection of articles drafted by Harish Bhat. At the fag end of Curious Marketer, apparently Harish’s tenth book having authored nine more before 2017, a correlation is drawn between speed and marketing, showering the reader with plenty of real life brands that proved successful in tacitly connecting the two aspects. 

Good read !