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Philip Chacko
The Tata brand is the legacy of an exceptional set of
qualities that were embedded from birth into an institution
that has matured into something unique
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.
Uploaded on October 10, 2005
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