The Curious Marketer: Expeditions in Branding and Consumer Behaviour

by Harish Bhat

'Out of curiosity comes everything'-Steve Jobs

From Apple to Tata Tea, many leading brands have their roots in curiosity. The desire to know more often leads to new ideas and perspectives; for a marketer, inquisitiveness shapes the way one looks at products and their branding. In his new book, Harish Bhat presents some of his most popular columns, which first appeared in The Hindu BusinessLine, exploring more than fifty products, places, people, books and publicity campaigns that excite him as a marketer.
From brand marketing using aliens and flying saucers to going big with a delicious local product (banana chips or coconut water), from the interesting concept behind multicoloured socks to the metamorphosis of the Diwali shopper, Bhat touches on fascinating areas that marketers are targeting today.

Immensely topical, this is a pleasurable read that will be of great interest to general readers, as well as students and professionals working in the colourful area of marketing.

Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Pulkit Agarwal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bought this hardback because of amazing work done by Harish Bhat at Titan and Tata tea but this is not a book, it is like reading a printed version of a boomer's Instagram account.

[Khushboo · Rating 1 out of 5]

I give it 0.5 and I would simply give this to any book for just its virtue of being a book. This book is so rubbish that I don't understand why anyone agreed to publish it at all. There are hardly any insights or good ideas. It's repetitive and at places borders on being a self-help book preaching curiosity as a virtue instead of either giving any concrete examples or coming up with some great ideas. The ideas are so vague and childish. For instance, in "marketing lessons from Ganesha", he says "there was a slim Ganesha in the Ganesh Chaturthi, so this shows that majority of Indians have flexible mindset. And as marketers we need to reimagine our products, packaging and advertising to keep brands contemporary. We can have limited edition packs and innovative shapes and sizes of products or may be amazingly innovative point of sale publicity material at retail outlets?" Wow, what insights! So all I have to do is to come up with amazing ideas. Alrighty. I didn't know that.
In "the Orchestration of magic", he praises Zubin Mehta, the musician and called him a magician and then he said after wearing his marketer's cap he "could not help" thinking that all of us in the marketing fraternity want to be magicians too.
Really you could not help thinking. Could you??

So anyway for that his advice is that each element of brand should sit in perfect harmony with all other elements. Geez!! I didn't know that. What an insight. This book is filled with such obvious shit.

On top of it, he has so badly researched topics that in "Your price tag is different from mine", he asks in the end if there is a possibility of e-commerce sites in India offering different prices and discounts to different buyers based on their past purchase behaviour. I mean does he not know that it's not a new phenomenon? And things like these have happened in the past and people suspect it of happening even now on many sites.

Horrible book!!

[Debolina Bhattacharya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relevant in the current times, the book is good and has given me a few pointers to think about!

[Samanvay Sinha · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a collection of articles and essays written by Harish Bhat. The book brings together his years of experience as marketer himself and his keen observations. My favourite section was the last one which dealt with consumer behaviour and insights. His allusion to a variety of campaigns and advertisements made me look at them again carefully- Airbnb's Walls and Chains campaign was something I really loved and owe it to the author for bringing me to notice the beautiful ad.I am still trying to find Louis Vuitton's ad which features Gorbachev.

A good light read which urges you to be curious about everything you come across in the market - makes sense if you are a marketer. Although I did find a Pizza Hut commercial which used Gorbachev as the brand ambassador.

[Shantanu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent read for a non-marketer like me. It is basically a compendium of Harish's articles in a leading newspaper over the years. While the marketing concepts would be well known to most in the field, I would recommend this book to someone who wants to start his/her journey in brands. The most striking feature of all brand stories mentioned in the book is simplicity. The message around the brand should be simple, uncluttered and should work like hot knife through butter. Easier said than done though, I admit. What you should avoid is complexity and too much layering, not just in the business of brands but generally in life too when you are doing a presentation or just plain communicating.

[Gopal Aggarwal · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Curious marketer is a practical guide in understanding brands & Marketing. Coming from a practicing CEO,you can be rest assured about the credibility of content and intent.
Mr Harish Bhat's narration of curiosity is impeccable.i assure you, whether you are a student/Marketing/advertising/Media professional, it will give a new perspective and open new vistas of understanding the subject of the book.
Thank you sir for giving this master piece.

[Pranjal Pande · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent breezy read, that will motivate to read more on the topic. The author, Mr Harish bhat has helpfully given out names of books, that would help broaden our interest. And lastly I must say the epilogue is absolutely hilarious. I read that multiple times myself and to others around me. Note of advice to the publisher, have the epilogue at the starting of the book. Would set the tone for the entire book

[Vikas Bagrecha · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best marketing and I would say business oriented book. The ideas one can extract and use in his field of business are excellent and out of the box. This books gives a sense of direction which a person can follow using trial and error method to become a success.

Thank you for the great insight.

[Rudro Mukherjee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why curiosity and observations are great tools for a marketer is explained with good examples. The TATA heritage and long illustrious career of Mr Harish Bhat shows through with clarity in how brands can make a difference.

[Ankit Agrawal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A light and engaging read for the most part. Some of the material was familiar, some was new to me. Branding and marketing possibilities in certain product and service segments were quite interesting, a few just sounded ludicrous on the face of it. Too much of Tata inserted into the book which could have been avoided even for a Tata life-longer.

The author meanders into happenings in his own life and personal musings every now and then which are mostly irrelevant to the book. Tighter editing could have taken care of it.

[Rajesh S Shirali · Rating 3 out of 5]

hold the author in very high regard. he is a role model for me.
not this book though. comes across as a series of platitudes.
would have been better if this were a series of cases put together by people who are hands on in these days and times in managing brands or categories. cases wherein they talk about real challenges, real inspiration from the sources mentioned in this book and real implementation of ideas/colutions

[Noushin Nuri · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for consumer insights backed by strong scientific and psychological research, this book can be disappointing. But The Curious Marketer is what the name says: full of raw perceptions about branding and consumer behaviour gathered by a curious mind. It might not present detailed research on the subject, but it definitely gives a good number of prompts for research.

[Ashutosh Makharia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think a decent attempt to bring some insights around marketing and branding. Most of the time we do certain things just for the sake of it but Harish Bhat has added a sense of thought to it. Can give it a try. Easy read.

[Suman Srivastava · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful collection of Harish's regular column on marketing. I absolutely adored the Epilogue written by his daughter and can quite imagine Harish behaving like that.

[Subin Sukumaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some interesting points worth reading.