Storm the Norm: Untold Stories of 20 Brands That Did It Best

by Anisha Motwani

Storm the Norm is a first-of-its-kind collection of contemporary stories of truly inspiring businesses and brands from India that either wrote or rewrote the norms of their respective industries and brought in unprecedented change and vibrancy.

This book features twenty such stories from an exciting mix of categories—telecommunications (Idea), foods and beverages (Sprite, Tata Tea, Kissan, Kurkure), personal care (Fiama Di Wills, Sensodyne), automobiles (Honda Motors, Ford and Mahindra), financial services (Axis Bank), entertainment (PVR), travel (MakeMyTrip) and media (The Times of India). Some of these are brands that have come from nowhere and created new categories, some have challenged the hegemony of long-standing leaders, and some are decades-old brands which have continuously reinvented themselves to stay on top.

Drawing from her rich experience with brands in India, Anisha Motwani has created a powerful package of inspiration and methodology. With a Foreword by insights specialist Santosh Desai and an Afterword by innovation specialist Ranjan Malik, Storm the Norm will leave you altered. This book is replete with crucial untold secrets of businesses that made all the difference.

Genres: Business

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Anisha Motwani is a multifaceted business leader and the managing director of StN Ventures. She is also the author of the national bestselling book Storm the Norm. A speaker, avid blogger and podcaster, Anisha is also an advisor, mentor and independent director on the boards of several organizations.

In recognition of her achievements, she was voted as one of the ‘50 Most Powerful Women in Indian Business’ by Business Today for three consecutive years, among many others.

Reviews

[Ankur Sharma · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is more of PR pitch than "untold stories". Looks like author was paid for the stories by the brands.

[Aniruddh Naik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thou shall not:

- have advertising

- have a marketing team

- recruit extra manpower

- blend tea

Decreed Darbari Seth, long-serving chairman of Tata Tea

When the story ‘The Journey of a Billion Cups’ starts with this line, it intrigues you to find out what happened next then? How the brand who created iconic campaign called ‘Jagoo Re’ say this? And then as you turn pages the story unfolds, scene by scene and everything falls in place.

After joining MBA I had this excitement towards spending time in library. To find books on marketing, advertising and consumer behaviour! Soon it dawned upon most of the books on the subjects I wanted to explore were written either by foreign authors or on global brands. On rare occasions I came across books written on Indian brands. Nothing much to celebrate as these brands are probably known to every marketing student.

There existed gap left by case studies. Case studies are written in a boring way. I wondered why brands can’t tell their stories in a gripping way. Just like a novel. Storm the Norm bridges this gap. Conceptualized & edited by marketing veteran Anisha Motwani, this book brings you candid brand stories. All 20 brands divided into 3 categories: Legacy, Challenger and Entrepreneur, share their journey: ups and downs, hits and misses and most importantly, what lies ahead.

For every student pursuing MBA, Storm the Norm is a must-read. I will tell you why. In couple of brand stories the core of their success lies less in marketing and more in setting up supply chain. Every story lays specific importance on terms like consumer research, ethnography and usage and attitude studies. Some stories tell you how casual it was to come up with a brand name and tagline. You don’t have to follow any models for that!

Some of the latest and lesser known stories of brands are PVR, Tata Tea, Axis Bank, Kurkure, Sprite, Honda, XUV500, Ford Ecosport, Times of India and Fiama Di Wills.

There’s something common in all 20 stories. They were determined to look into the future, design and develop new products by anticipating how the consumer would change. The very determination to be futuristic makes you scan the existing. Today an industry works with benchmarks like A, B & C. So if you want to be lambi race ka ghoda, it is time to storm the norms and change the rules of the game.

All said and done about stories, but brands should get more business and add consistently to the company’s bottomline. Storm The Norm takes you through simple tables and charts that prove storming the norms gets reflected on your sales revenues and hence positive P&L.

That brings me to the point of Afterword by Innovation specialist Ranjan Malik. You will have your AHA moment here. Ranjan constructs a framework for storming the norm with an impressive illustration.

My verdict (For students of course): Keep this book as we embark upon an exciting journey called career. We need inspiration for whatever brand we will be researching, building, distributing and advocating and this book gives you direction, forces you to take lessons from these 20 brand stories and come up with your own. I am going to keep it with me for all the good and the bad times.

[Jai Gupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

The creation of brands are very interesting-the amount of time, effort, energies, research and money to build a national brand is truly colossal. This book tells you the story of 20 Indian brands that are bigger than life. It makes it an interesting read because each brand has a different story to tell. However, the book focuses only on success stories and how everything that these companies have done had made them successful. This is little different from reality. I liked the book in parts- at places it presents us with instances that is pure genius. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to seek marketing as a career option since some of the ideas of marketing campaigns are really creative.

[Ankur Vohra · Rating 3 out of 5]

A kind of book on marketing, advertising and branding, that is short, sweet but not in depth. It sort of touches the tip of the iceberg. The book talk about 20 or so brands in the Indian Market who have come up with innovative campaigns either to launch new products, take upon competition or launch a new product category itself although not an academic book but it surely does give an insight how ever briefly into what went behind the scenes in coming up with some of the most innovative & loved marketing campaigns in contemporary India. Recommended for some one interested in marketing, branding or communications in the Indian context.

[Kumar Vaibhav · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book is a PR exercise by all of 20 brands, its glorification with no real key insights worthy of case study based approach to writing such a book. It might be ok for a young 1st year MBA student perspective, but it isnt penny worth for people who know business and indian brands even in a nutshell because the book doesnt tell you anything that you wouldnt know off the net albeit that it is full of adjectives glorifying all 20. If a brand story like Cadburys dairy milk doesnt speak about the worm incident and turnaround thats the nail in the coffin for such a write.

[Rohit Manghnani · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shallow, history coverage of some brands

Shallow coverage of the timeline of how some brands have evolved. I have been personally associated with a few of those. The book is good for MBA students who want to read Indian branding / business examples and case studies. Nothing more. Not worth the time.

[Karan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A B School Read

This book is very useful if you are preparing for B school or are passing out of one.

However the book ends up being a disappointment if you are looking for indepth or at least a pointed study of what led to the success of these brands.

It focuses largely on communication and so called vision thought never delving into the details that make a business tick.

Why did MTR choose to sell? TOI has no mention of Bombay Times and it's imitation from Express in Chandigarh. It does not show any moments of crisis from the brand history, the Cadbury story completely ignores the worm fiasco that the brand faced and how it turned it around.

This book is more like a PR exercise for 20 brands.

[Sparsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Crisp & concise, although it would had been better if few stories were omitted & other stories like Cadbury, TOI & PVR which have really accomplished something would have been enlarged. Although a good coffee table book which you can read in your short breaks, not for binge reading

[Mehul Ashar · Rating 4 out of 5]

One well written book about Indian brands.... we have very few books for students of Marketing where we discuss the journey of Indian brands and how they have Stormed the Norm.

A must read for marketers and students of management.

Thanks Anisha, for this one... look forward to more from you.

[Arush · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much of takeaway apart from the facts that are neatly compiled and presented

[Dhiran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and insightful stories of some well known brands. Storms first challenge the norms and then change the norm itself. #BookLovers #LoveToRead #atozentrepreneurship #dntjbookclub

[Virtuous Puru · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful... Inspiring... Incredible

[Kamalika · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book if you wanna know about a brand you didn't before. But lacked a certain amount of depth. Overall a good one time read

[Manav Pandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the old folklores of Indian Marketing, unknown to many Indians. Must read for someone who are interested in Marketing stories

[Punit Gajera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book for India entrepreneurs to start with

[Ronie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I bought this book to only read about the story of Raymond. But after reading all the interviews, I was happy I bought this book.

[Gopal Venkatraman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of learning for marketing professionals. Quite an insightful book.

[Vishal Kale · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is yet another milestone in Indian writing on our internal marketing and business success stories; for way too long we have been fed Western success stories in our marketing books and cases, virtually 100% of which have little direct applicability in India and consequently learnings from them. There is precious little literature on our own stories, of which we have examples aplenty. The complete lack of quality research on and writing on Indian cases is a major lacuna we face; one that is now being slowly bridged.



I recall reading only 3 books so far – one a book on Positioning giving Indian case studies, another a more recent book by Anuradha Goyal on Ecommerce companies, and this – the third one. And sadly, not one of these is available on book stores prominently; while I can spot an entire series of books by Western authors, Harvard and what not; as I mentioned in my review on HBR Case Studies book on Decisions, I can understand the concepts; but the setting is totally alien and inapplicable to the business atmosphere in India, rendering the much-vaunted HBR useless to me as a practicing business manager in the Indian Economy.





ABOUT THE BOOK


This book takes out 20 case studies from contemporary India – making it a treasure trove for all Business Managers. These are companies we have worked in, producing products we have purchased in a socio-cultural atmosphere we are comfortable in, and in a geography we understand. The chosen case studies are basis brands that have challenged norms, redefined markets or created new ones, brands which have been transformational in their impact and approach; all in all – brands which have done things out of the ordinary.


Catch the complete review here : https://reflectionsvvk.blogspot.in/20...

[Bharat · Rating 2 out of 5]

After laying my hands on the new kindle paper white, i excitedly paid up for the kindle unlimited subscription with the aim to read up everything possible. Though the collection is limited, there are many an interesting books in the collection.

I downloaded the allowed 10 books immediately and got reading "Storming the Norm" by Anisha Motwani this one immediately. Being in the marketing profession, reading up on brands and their evolution seemed to the most obvious thing.

The book explores the way top brands are built through the examples of some top brands that have been built in India. The Brands listed here are classified into neat segments and the mix is across industries varying from FMCG, telecom, automotive, etc..

Reading the evolution of each of these brands helps the reader understand and learn how a brand is built on consistent communication of a great product, keeping the media and language relevant to the ages.

The book did not live up to the expectations though. The monotony in explaining history of each of the brands seems more like reading up their wiki page, or the company page of these brands and it gives a feel that it is more of a PR pitch sponsored by each of the brands listed here. No negatives are highlighted about any brand and that builds on the suspicion even more.

Having said that, the book serves as a good starting point for anyone to read up the history of each of these brands and get a glimpse of the inside workings on building a brand.

It is a short book, lacking the depth that i was looking forward to. Maybe further detailing the finer nuances of brand building and the difficult choices faced by the people at the help and the reasoning used to arrive at the decision would have helped build further texture.

This review was first published at - http://bharatjhurani.com/2017/01/stor...

[Pragya Khanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on brands to date. Most brand books are strongly skewed to marketing, but this one is a healthy mix of marketing and business. Hence a more holistic perspective.
Also, one typically reads more case studies on global brands and finds very little value in reading about Indian. We often feel, we live and breathe India, what's there to know? A lot actually, once you go through this one. The Afterword is quite interesting too.

[Ashwini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good insights and a fascinating history of every dày products. Started off very well but over the many chapters turned a bit monotonous. The Storm the Norm model at the end can we used as a good aid for innovation workshops.

[Imran · Rating 3 out of 5]

An informative read to know about development of 20 Indian brands (few like Cadbury, Kurkuray, Sprite having a market in Pakistan).

[Sumit Sabnis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good starting point to know more about various Brands around us in India.

[Aakash Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Read, quite comprehensive analysis of brands and their Growth path. You will enjoy this If you love to read about brands

[Chetan Mathur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful stories with great learnings told in a simple easy to read language. Anisha is a marketing guru and she brings out facets of brands and their reason to succeed in a brilliant manner.

[Divya Gonnabathula · Rating 2 out of 5]

One time read, but culd have been better. Author should have chosen few brands and dug deeper instead of choosing 20 and covering them briefly. Nevertheless, can read this once.

[Senthil · Rating 3 out of 5]

full of survivorship bias but came to know about the history of many brands and how they evolved was interesting.