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Storm the Norm: Untold Stories of 20 Brands That Did It Best
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.
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.
- GenresBusiness
371 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2016
64 people are currently reading
284 people want to read
About the author
Anisha Motwani
7 books6 followersAnisha 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
March 13, 2016
It is more of PR pitch than "untold stories". Looks like author was paid for the stories by the brands.
March 28, 2021
Book: Storm the Norm: Untold Stories of 20 Brands That Did It Best
Author: Anisha Motwani
Publisher: Rupa Publications India; First edition (26 January 2016)
Language: English
Hardcover: 320 pages
Item Weight: 603 g
Dimensions: 15.24 x 2.06 x 22.86 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 468/-
Building brands in India presents challenges of many kinds. We are in reality, an antique culture with its own set of laws, an unequally developed market, a bursting-with-desire customer, assorted competitors and a disjointed media landscape, all add up to convolution of a redoubtable kind.
Growing categories and building leadership positions necessitate an amalgamation of many abilities and doing so constantly is an intimidating enterprise.
The modern reader reads the biographies of great men and women, he devours the stories of business empires and create folk heroes out of figures in popular culture. When he does hear about brands, it is either by way of highly structured case studies or by way of anecdote or sketchy journalistic coverage.
When business talks about brands, it exhibits a strange ability for taking a extremely attractive subject and burying it knee deep in truisms.
What is affected is authentic learning, a process that requires data and past experience, filtered through the lens of balanced analysis.
Brand stories are like detective stories of ideas—they involve a profound comprehension of some human truths, they slice open implied cultural desires, create products and services that make us experience the world in new ways, act in ways bright and shrewd, brave and enthused, fail in ways unintelligent and stunning, communicate in an astounding collection of forms.
In short they tell us about themselves, the people behind them and, above all, about ourselves, those who interact with these brands.
The stories that feature in this wonderful wonderful book are elite accounts of what went into building some of the most influential and pioneering brands in India.
Given that business in India has tended to look westwards when it comes to case studies involving brands, indeed there is greater acquaintance among Indian practitioners with brands like Apple, Microsoft, Nike, Dove and Virgin than with local success stories.
The author has divided his book into the following three segments:
a) Legacy Businesses: Companies that have been in the country for quite a few years, often decades, and have continued to remain on top of their game by storming the standard and by reinventing and innovating themselves.
b) Challenger Businesses: Companies that have made a momentous mark by challenging the leader in their category through novel products, services and marketing.
c) Entrepreneurial Businesses: Companies that may be big or small, standalone or part of a big corporate, but which stand out for their entrepreneurial character—their ability to unlock hidden opportunities, take bold steps and create entirely new categories by themselves.
The chapters of the book have been organized as follows:
I. ENTREPRENEUR
1) PVR: The multiplex revolution
2) MakeMyTrip: A journey of countless miles and beyond
3) The Mirchi story: ‘It’s hot!’
4) ‘Real’ success
II. CHALLENGER
1) Tata Tea: The journey of a billion cups
2) Sprite: What India’s best marketers do differently
3) Axis Bank: How a challenger brand became the most trusted private sector bank brand
4) The cheetah-inspired XUV500 prowls the global automotive arena
5) Kurkure: An ‘item number in the mouth’ that keeps family fun times rolling
6) The wind beneath the wings: Honda’s dream run in India
7) Sensodyne: Changing the oral-care landscape in India
8) The Idea story
9) Ford EcoSport: The making of a success story
10) Fiama Di Wills: Challenger to game changer
III. LEGACY
1) Cadbury: How a foreign chocolate won Indian hearts
2) Kissan: Going beyond food
3) MTR: The story of a legendary brand
4) Raymond: The story of a complete brand
5) Saffola: The braveheart brand
6) The Times of India: Changing India, changing ‘Times’
A miscellaneous assortment of stories that give insight into what kind of levers can be used to fashion a winner brand.
Take for example chocolate maker and market leader, Cadbury. Everyone has savoured the taste of Cadbury Dairy Milk, and virtually every marketer worth his/her salt would be aware of the brand’s victorious integration into the traditional sweet-eating habit of Indians.
But what strategies and actions went into achieving this?
The Cadbury story documents how it all began with a big shift in thinking about business and growth. It is a lesson at many levels: a lesson on how a large and potent target audience can gradually become a roadblock for future business; a prompt that the path to growth need not forever be through growing market share; a story of how it is likely for a foreign brand to become part of the cultural fabric without localizing the product too much.
Equally the story showcases the enchantment that ensued when the brand adapted itself and created new codes that fitted more flawlessly with category and culture.
Another example of a legacy brand is The Times of India (TOI), a brand that has been around more than 175 years. The TOI is a clean illustration of blossoming and not just existing in the marketplace. Its story documents a noteworthy expedition from being a marker of news and change to becoming an influencer of change for the nation.
What does the reader find in the ‘challenger brand’ segment?
When you think of great products, bathing soap is barely the first thing that comes to mind. However, that is precisely what the Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) aimed to do, when it decided to break in the category with Fiama Di Wills. A truly belated contestant into one of the oldest categories in the country, the brand was clear that its leading intention was to challenge the characteristic soap and create a breathtaking new product—one that was differentiated not just by form, colour or fragrance, but also a mixture of ingredients and technology that Indians had never witnessed before.
The Fiama Di Wills story, for instance, illustrates how some companies are clear that first it is critical to create a hero product.
The author, thereafter moves to another league of brands altogether—the youthful entrepreneurial businesses. While there is abundance of such accomplishment stories in India today, the author has selected a few that have made a mark in more ways than one. These are businesses whose triumph is not plainly measured in terms of business valuation or the fact that they are media darlings, but those whose start-to-date journeys hold vital lessons in doing business for everybody.
The author for instance takes up ‘MakeMyTrip’. This is an amazing tale of pursuing the vision of forever changing the way Indians researched, planned and booked their travel. From the days where vacation planning was a boring project and life without travel agents and long ticketing queues absurd, to now, when online travel planning and purchasing is common practice, this brand has had a revolutionary role in determining the change.
By riding up-and-coming trends, taking levelheaded decisions when a large bulk of the market was not ready for their dream and fostering deep relationships with allied partners, Deep Kalra and his team strategized their way to success. Like a blockbuster movie, the expedition had numerous twists and turns and a few junctures when the founder was tempted to sell or shut shop but chose to keep faith instead.
What adds to the excitement is that the MakeMyTrip story is packed with not one or two but so many uniquenesses across product offerings, service standards, technology, marketing and operations that one is continually looking out for what next they did another way!
Such extraordinary lessons continue across other entrepreneurial brands as well. What these kinds of brands do best is to open up stimulating ways of thinking and going about their business, so they obviously offer a lot of precious lessons along the way.
Like PVR, where Ajay Bijli turned the whole expectation from cinema theatre upside down.
Until the 1990s, cinema theatres were mostly just a destination, and movies were the real deal. The theatre itself was just a venue for stories to unfold.
But he changed all that. Not only did he commence the multiplex culture, he created a new epoch in movie watching, where choice, comfort, luxury and entertainment all united, to take the movie-goer’s familiarity to a fresh lofty point.
There are several more examples of such category transformation. Radio Mirchi, for example, is a story of a gyrate of the radio medium itself; of how a lackluster medium from which hopes had remained unbothered for decades, turned cool and disrespectful; and how entertainment found a new source.
It is also a great lesson on how you can win many fans by experimenting all the way through.
Many of us may not know this, but Raymond’s ‘The Complete Man’ broke the rules of fashion advertising in its time. Then there is Honda two wheelers—a wonderful legend of storming the norm in scooters and making Activa a reverberating hit, and then of how it carried with it its captivating strategies post its joint venture with Hero coming to an end.
On an utterly diverse note is the story of Sprite, a brand built on communiqué, on stalwartly marrying youth insights with product truth, of turning an entirely niche lime category into a mass brand.
Similarly there are Ford EcoSport, Axis Bank, Kissan, MTR Foods, Saffola, Dabur Real, Sensodyne, Tata Tea and Mahindra XUV500. Each of their growth stories provides insights into creating a storm in their individual categories and achieving terrific results.
Some successes are based on allocation, some on product, some on communication, while others are based on core business models.
There are stories of reinvention, of strategies on market expansion, and some even of using weaker siblings in the brand portfolio to strengthen overall business.
This book is a warm chesthouse of tales about Indian brands that have succeeded in the face of grand challenges. Like all good stories, they hold lumps of perception and learning, and, like the justly grand stories, they sometimes leave the extraction of this learning to the reader.
Covering a miscellaneous assortment of categories and contexts, each and every story in this book is designed to encourage thought and endorse reflection.
The learning lies in stories of both resemblance and difference; in some cases readers will find situations that are analogous to the ones they encounter, while in others they will find ideas that facilitate envisage their own context very differently.
I, on my part, comprehensively enjoyed the journey.
This book makes you endeavor to be an improved individual – one who is fearless in the mouth of failures.
You can grab a copy if you choose.
Author: Anisha Motwani
Publisher: Rupa Publications India; First edition (26 January 2016)
Language: English
Hardcover: 320 pages
Item Weight: 603 g
Dimensions: 15.24 x 2.06 x 22.86 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 468/-
Building brands in India presents challenges of many kinds. We are in reality, an antique culture with its own set of laws, an unequally developed market, a bursting-with-desire customer, assorted competitors and a disjointed media landscape, all add up to convolution of a redoubtable kind.
Growing categories and building leadership positions necessitate an amalgamation of many abilities and doing so constantly is an intimidating enterprise.
The modern reader reads the biographies of great men and women, he devours the stories of business empires and create folk heroes out of figures in popular culture. When he does hear about brands, it is either by way of highly structured case studies or by way of anecdote or sketchy journalistic coverage.
When business talks about brands, it exhibits a strange ability for taking a extremely attractive subject and burying it knee deep in truisms.
What is affected is authentic learning, a process that requires data and past experience, filtered through the lens of balanced analysis.
Brand stories are like detective stories of ideas—they involve a profound comprehension of some human truths, they slice open implied cultural desires, create products and services that make us experience the world in new ways, act in ways bright and shrewd, brave and enthused, fail in ways unintelligent and stunning, communicate in an astounding collection of forms.
In short they tell us about themselves, the people behind them and, above all, about ourselves, those who interact with these brands.
The stories that feature in this wonderful wonderful book are elite accounts of what went into building some of the most influential and pioneering brands in India.
Given that business in India has tended to look westwards when it comes to case studies involving brands, indeed there is greater acquaintance among Indian practitioners with brands like Apple, Microsoft, Nike, Dove and Virgin than with local success stories.
The author has divided his book into the following three segments:
a) Legacy Businesses: Companies that have been in the country for quite a few years, often decades, and have continued to remain on top of their game by storming the standard and by reinventing and innovating themselves.
b) Challenger Businesses: Companies that have made a momentous mark by challenging the leader in their category through novel products, services and marketing.
c) Entrepreneurial Businesses: Companies that may be big or small, standalone or part of a big corporate, but which stand out for their entrepreneurial character—their ability to unlock hidden opportunities, take bold steps and create entirely new categories by themselves.
The chapters of the book have been organized as follows:
I. ENTREPRENEUR
1) PVR: The multiplex revolution
2) MakeMyTrip: A journey of countless miles and beyond
3) The Mirchi story: ‘It’s hot!’
4) ‘Real’ success
II. CHALLENGER
1) Tata Tea: The journey of a billion cups
2) Sprite: What India’s best marketers do differently
3) Axis Bank: How a challenger brand became the most trusted private sector bank brand
4) The cheetah-inspired XUV500 prowls the global automotive arena
5) Kurkure: An ‘item number in the mouth’ that keeps family fun times rolling
6) The wind beneath the wings: Honda’s dream run in India
7) Sensodyne: Changing the oral-care landscape in India
8) The Idea story
9) Ford EcoSport: The making of a success story
10) Fiama Di Wills: Challenger to game changer
III. LEGACY
1) Cadbury: How a foreign chocolate won Indian hearts
2) Kissan: Going beyond food
3) MTR: The story of a legendary brand
4) Raymond: The story of a complete brand
5) Saffola: The braveheart brand
6) The Times of India: Changing India, changing ‘Times’
A miscellaneous assortment of stories that give insight into what kind of levers can be used to fashion a winner brand.
Take for example chocolate maker and market leader, Cadbury. Everyone has savoured the taste of Cadbury Dairy Milk, and virtually every marketer worth his/her salt would be aware of the brand’s victorious integration into the traditional sweet-eating habit of Indians.
But what strategies and actions went into achieving this?
The Cadbury story documents how it all began with a big shift in thinking about business and growth. It is a lesson at many levels: a lesson on how a large and potent target audience can gradually become a roadblock for future business; a prompt that the path to growth need not forever be through growing market share; a story of how it is likely for a foreign brand to become part of the cultural fabric without localizing the product too much.
Equally the story showcases the enchantment that ensued when the brand adapted itself and created new codes that fitted more flawlessly with category and culture.
Another example of a legacy brand is The Times of India (TOI), a brand that has been around more than 175 years. The TOI is a clean illustration of blossoming and not just existing in the marketplace. Its story documents a noteworthy expedition from being a marker of news and change to becoming an influencer of change for the nation.
What does the reader find in the ‘challenger brand’ segment?
When you think of great products, bathing soap is barely the first thing that comes to mind. However, that is precisely what the Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) aimed to do, when it decided to break in the category with Fiama Di Wills. A truly belated contestant into one of the oldest categories in the country, the brand was clear that its leading intention was to challenge the characteristic soap and create a breathtaking new product—one that was differentiated not just by form, colour or fragrance, but also a mixture of ingredients and technology that Indians had never witnessed before.
The Fiama Di Wills story, for instance, illustrates how some companies are clear that first it is critical to create a hero product.
The author, thereafter moves to another league of brands altogether—the youthful entrepreneurial businesses. While there is abundance of such accomplishment stories in India today, the author has selected a few that have made a mark in more ways than one. These are businesses whose triumph is not plainly measured in terms of business valuation or the fact that they are media darlings, but those whose start-to-date journeys hold vital lessons in doing business for everybody.
The author for instance takes up ‘MakeMyTrip’. This is an amazing tale of pursuing the vision of forever changing the way Indians researched, planned and booked their travel. From the days where vacation planning was a boring project and life without travel agents and long ticketing queues absurd, to now, when online travel planning and purchasing is common practice, this brand has had a revolutionary role in determining the change.
By riding up-and-coming trends, taking levelheaded decisions when a large bulk of the market was not ready for their dream and fostering deep relationships with allied partners, Deep Kalra and his team strategized their way to success. Like a blockbuster movie, the expedition had numerous twists and turns and a few junctures when the founder was tempted to sell or shut shop but chose to keep faith instead.
What adds to the excitement is that the MakeMyTrip story is packed with not one or two but so many uniquenesses across product offerings, service standards, technology, marketing and operations that one is continually looking out for what next they did another way!
Such extraordinary lessons continue across other entrepreneurial brands as well. What these kinds of brands do best is to open up stimulating ways of thinking and going about their business, so they obviously offer a lot of precious lessons along the way.
Like PVR, where Ajay Bijli turned the whole expectation from cinema theatre upside down.
Until the 1990s, cinema theatres were mostly just a destination, and movies were the real deal. The theatre itself was just a venue for stories to unfold.
But he changed all that. Not only did he commence the multiplex culture, he created a new epoch in movie watching, where choice, comfort, luxury and entertainment all united, to take the movie-goer’s familiarity to a fresh lofty point.
There are several more examples of such category transformation. Radio Mirchi, for example, is a story of a gyrate of the radio medium itself; of how a lackluster medium from which hopes had remained unbothered for decades, turned cool and disrespectful; and how entertainment found a new source.
It is also a great lesson on how you can win many fans by experimenting all the way through.
Many of us may not know this, but Raymond’s ‘The Complete Man’ broke the rules of fashion advertising in its time. Then there is Honda two wheelers—a wonderful legend of storming the norm in scooters and making Activa a reverberating hit, and then of how it carried with it its captivating strategies post its joint venture with Hero coming to an end.
On an utterly diverse note is the story of Sprite, a brand built on communiqué, on stalwartly marrying youth insights with product truth, of turning an entirely niche lime category into a mass brand.
Similarly there are Ford EcoSport, Axis Bank, Kissan, MTR Foods, Saffola, Dabur Real, Sensodyne, Tata Tea and Mahindra XUV500. Each of their growth stories provides insights into creating a storm in their individual categories and achieving terrific results.
Some successes are based on allocation, some on product, some on communication, while others are based on core business models.
There are stories of reinvention, of strategies on market expansion, and some even of using weaker siblings in the brand portfolio to strengthen overall business.
This book is a warm chesthouse of tales about Indian brands that have succeeded in the face of grand challenges. Like all good stories, they hold lumps of perception and learning, and, like the justly grand stories, they sometimes leave the extraction of this learning to the reader.
Covering a miscellaneous assortment of categories and contexts, each and every story in this book is designed to encourage thought and endorse reflection.
The learning lies in stories of both resemblance and difference; in some cases readers will find situations that are analogous to the ones they encounter, while in others they will find ideas that facilitate envisage their own context very differently.
I, on my part, comprehensively enjoyed the journey.
This book makes you endeavor to be an improved individual – one who is fearless in the mouth of failures.
You can grab a copy if you choose.
January 12, 2016
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.
- 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.
July 2, 2017
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.
May 14, 2016
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.
March 25, 2016
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.
June 2, 2020
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.
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.
July 4, 2018
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.
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.
July 3, 2022
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
January 23, 2018
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.
A must read for marketers and students of management.
Thanks Anisha, for this one... look forward to more from you.
January 15, 2019
Not much of takeaway apart from the facts that are neatly compiled and presented
July 26, 2020
Interesting and insightful stories of some well known brands. Storms first challenge the norms and then change the norm itself. #BookLovers #LoveToRead #atozentrepreneurship #dntjbookclub
August 15, 2020
Insightful... Inspiring... Incredible
February 25, 2021
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
May 11, 2021
Some of the old folklores of Indian Marketing, unknown to many Indians. Must read for someone who are interested in Marketing stories
April 25, 2023
Best book for India entrepreneurs to start with
July 29, 2023
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.
April 5, 2020
Lots of learning for marketing professionals. Quite an insightful book.
February 13, 2017
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...
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...
January 22, 2017
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...
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...
January 7, 2016
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.
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.
March 23, 2016
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.
May 23, 2016
An informative read to know about development of 20 Indian brands (few like Cadbury, Kurkuray, Sprite having a market in Pakistan).
August 13, 2016
Good starting point to know more about various Brands around us in India.
January 5, 2017
Good Read, quite comprehensive analysis of brands and their Growth path. You will enjoy this If you love to read about brands
June 20, 2020
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.
April 4, 2017
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.
July 5, 2017
full of survivorship bias but came to know about the history of many brands and how they evolved was interesting.
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