“Did you hear anything untoward in the galli outside your house last night?”

I’m a big-time whodunit fan. From Agatha Christie to Abir Mukherjee, I’ve read them all, and then some. You could say I’m more of a whydunit fan nowadays. I’m usually able to say whodunit within the first few chapters with most authors. There are very few who actually get me thinking, and Chandna Sethi is one of them.

CSeth (as her fans call her) is famous for novels set in the bylanes of Varanasi – rich romps of Rastafarian sadhus in ochre holding blonde femme fatales hostage and shooting Russian oligarchs on the ghats. I love the colour in her novels and dream of becoming a writer like her when I ‘grow up’ and outgrow Goobe (except, my stories will be set in Bangalore, of course).

So it was no surprise when I literally whooped in joy when the suave Vikram Sethi called, asking for branding help. After all, he may be a new hi-tech wizkid who’s brought home millions of greenbacks to our city, but to my eyes, he’s just CSeth’s elder son. If I got a chance to meet the OG herself, well, nothing like it, I told myself!

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He sure is a dazzler, the boy, I said to myself as I shook hands with Vikram. While most Americans I know seem to pride themselves on acquiring healthy tans all over, many desis who step onto foreign shores seem to acquire pale, almost vampirish glows. In Vikram’s case, it was possibly because he’d spent far too many hours in front of screens or in boardrooms. The paleness, however, did nothing to diminish his godlike looks. If they were casting for the new Ramayan, he’d make it to the front of the line to audition for Ram.

This divine visage was marred by an almost unholy sneer at the moment.

“So you guys will do some branding for us?” he drawled as he ushered Maya and me onto the plush sofas at one end of his office. “Let me tell you, I’ve built a successful enterprise without spending a dime on marketing to date. Payal knows it very well. You’ll have to convince me why I need to start today.”

Maya and I exchanged glances. We’ve seen many engineering wunderkids-turned-CEOs in Beantown, and they invariably looked down on marketing. But we know the value we bring to the table, so I rolled up my mental sleeves and took a deep breath.

I need not have worried. His newly minted Marketing Head, Payal Singhi, sitting at the other end, frowned. In an exasperated tone, she said, “Vik, we’ve been through this so many times! Marketing is not just about nurturing prospects; it’s also about building a sustainable brand in the marketplace. It will help us with customer success activities, as well as make us an attractive destination for job candidates.”

Vik held his hands up in surrender and laughed. “I hear you loud and clear, Payal! I’m taking this meeting, am I not? Let’s talk, Goobe folks!”

And so we did. I opened with my overview about brands and brand manifestos, and Maya patiently walked him through our archetype deck. As we went through the exercise, I could see that we had him hooked. He understood the value of what we sought to build – he’d be a fool if he did not, and this man was no fool.

Vik asked a lot of incisive questions, and engaged us for almost two and a half hours – well over the hour we’d initially been invited for. Payal initially grew restive as the hour neared, but when she saw that her plan was becoming reality in front of her eyes, she sat back, pleased.

I couldn’t help asking, “Have you really not spent any money on marketing to date at all?”

“Well, no money is an overstatement”, he admitted. “We’ve done our fair share of press releases, brochures and websites and stuff. It’s usually handled by the division heads. I’ve not felt the need to carve out a Marketing function. Our Head of Sales, Sharan, has people to take care of much of this, and now, Payal will spearhead all of it” Vik nodded semi-sheepishly.

I grinned, satisfied. Marketing by any other name smells just as good, in my book! And I’m yet to see a company make it big without some flavour of branding and marketing in place.

“So how long will it take for you guys to build our brand manifesto?” Vik was quick to seize the momentum.

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The brand book, or brand manifesto as we dub it, is the central document or deliverable from your branding team. It captures the essence of the brand that all people who work with the brand must follow – marketers, designers, salespeople, anyone building content, collateral, creatives or design for the brand

A brand manifesto typically consists of:

• The vision of the brand –  in what way is the brand going to change the world forever?

• The brand message – what are the keywords and phrases associated with the brand?

• The brand voice – does the brand speak in a friendly, chatty voice or an authoritative, masterful tone, or in a totally different tone altogether?

• What are the archetypes the brand is built on?

• colour palette, iconography, moods and design elements that make up the brand

…and other such details.

For those who don’t want to engage a branding expert, I recommend some introspection, starting with answers to such questions. Put together your own manifesto based on what I’ve listed above  – add, delete and modify as you feel relevant to make your vision a reality.  Your manifesto can be a clarion call to your team, your suppliers, partners and ecosystem on how best to represent your brand – the ‘binder’ that brings it all together.

Some branding experts even evoke the moods of cities or people to associate with the brand.

For Vik’s org, for example, an initial moodboard of New Bangalore that Maya sketched really brought together the energy he was looking for. 

We used that as a baseline to kickstart an introspection session with his leadership, where we did some ‘whydunit’ – Vik and his team pondered on the reasons why they did what they did. Such exercises, when done together (preferably with everyone in the same room), really help bring everyone on the same page when it comes to the brand message – in fact, I recommend every org do this once every couple of years.

We also did some competitive branding research and built a manifesto that screamed vibrant “Viking” – his enterprise.

And…I got to meet CSeth at the brand kickoff meeting – she’s his head of Content Strategy after all! I must say, it was a terrific half hour discussing what the late-night noises in my galli could portend!