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What would Jamsetji Tata have made of the all the words, phrases and soundbites that have come to envelope and embellish the term 'brand'? You can be certain the founder of the Tata Group never heard the word in the context that it is used most frequently these days — as a name given to a product, a service or a corporate organisation — but it is just as certain that he created the bedrock on which the Tata brand has, in his time and since his passing, built and enhanced its reputation. That foundation remains the essence of the Group, its enterprises and their functioning.
The businesses that Jamsetji established and — more importantly, from his and the Group's perspective — the values that have nurtured and defined them were born of an intrinsic philosophy, one which placed trust above profit and the greater good over immediate deliverance. The evolution of the Tata brand and the ethical recall it generates in all who have been touched by or associated with it could never have been consciously engineered. No 'brand-building initiative' could have engendered the faith that the name Tata today evokes in people far and wide.
That, simply put, has happened because the Group has honoured the promises it has made. And it is the promise, not the product or service, that today's consumer buys.
"My definition of a brand is that it is much more than a name; it is, in addition, a bunch of unique associations that are embedded in the head," says R. Gopalakrishnan, executive director, Tata Sons, and one of the key people involved in the Tata Group's brand-enhancement endeavours. "Why does something get imprinted in your head? Because you have some experience with that brand that has caused you to perceive its distinctiveness."
The quality of distinctiveness is much more difficult to achieve for corporate brands, as opposed to product brands. "People are able to relate to a product brand much better," explains Mr Gopalakrishnan, "given that there are physical characteristics that distinguish it." The corporate brand, on the other hand, has to rely for recognition on intangibles: images, emotions, stories and the like. Mr Gopalakrishnan likens the corporate brand to the soul, while the company is a bit like the body. The corporate brand lives on even if the body changes.
The soul of the Tata corporate brand has been expressed down the ages through an exceptional set of qualities: consistency, single-mindedness, openness and credibility. Add to this factors such as caring for the wider community and helping in the construction of national resources, and you get a marque that is almost unique. Mr Gopalakrishnan understands the value of the Tata name well enough. "We are lucky to be sitting where we are and being able to deal with this brand," he says. "We have not created it; if we can avoid messing around with it we will have done a pretty good job."
The Tata businesses have prospered and progressed because the Group has looked beyond commercial rewards and profits. That is less true of many other business conglomerates. What makes the Group unusual is that its prosperity and growth have been achieved while adhering to unyielding ethical parameters, and a sense of sharing that embraces the wider world rather than just the obvious stakeholders.
A striking resoluteness of purpose has been a defining feature of the manner in which the Group has conducted its businesses. Consistency and credibility have been the other attributes that set the Tatas apart. Mr Gopalakrishnan appends another element to the winning Tata brand mix: candidness. "All brands are susceptible to the occasional aberration," he says. "Consumers will not like this but they will forgive you, provided the aberration is recognised and you get back to what you stand for.
"The Tata brand has shown that, like human beings, it is fallible. It makes mistakes once in a while, but it is candid enough to acknowledge its error, correct it and move on." That is an uncommon trait in a business world where the cover-up and its handmaiden, obfuscation, are omnipresent.
It is no accident that the Group is today seen as a bastion of ethics in business, but then neither is there any grand design behind this driving need to stick to the straight and narrow. The implicit has been reinforced by the explicit, through, for example, the Tata code of conduct, and these have combined to provide the brand an identity that elevates it in the eyes of all those who cross its path. "Behaviour is everything," says Mr Gopalakrishnan. "Jamsetji Tata and those who followed him behaved in a manner that has come to represent the Tata way of life. What we are trying to do is take this great institution and this great brand and try to apply some modern marketing methodologies to it."
The Group's focus on the brand-strengthening front in recent years has been, in Chairman Ratan Tata's words, "to create a single, strong entity that will benefit all Tata companies". In lockstep with this objective are the traditional values that have sustained and nourished the brand. And delivering on the Tata promise will be the Group's employees, the largely unseen ambassadors who are propelling the brand forward.
There is no precise date to signify the birth of the Tata Group, but a loose marker could be 1867, the year in which a 28-year-old Jamsetji Tata established the trading firm Tata and Sons. That was the modest beginning of a brand that is today valued in billions of dollars. "The emotional valuation for the people in Tatas could be much more," says Mr Gopalakrishnan. Remarkably, the story of this outstanding marque, woven intricately into the fabric of modern India, has many more chapters to come.
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