This is a personal narration of the five most influential brands in my own life. Hence, the names of brands you read about here may not necessarily be the same as the brands you have seen in the “Ipsos Most Influential Brands survey” that has been published today elsewhere in this newspaper. In fact, the Editor has ensured that I do not see the results of that survey in advance, so that my narration is completely unbiased. In addition, I am describing here brands which have influenced me deeply over the past three decades which is, of course, quite different from the most influential brands of any specific year.

What makes a brand influential? To begin with, I ask myself — when can I say that a brand has truly influenced my life? Perhaps the simplest answer is that when a brand has become fundamental to my day-to-day life, it wields great influence. In other words, I would find it difficult to conduct my daily life in the absence of this brand. In addition, if the brand has also changed my life in some significant way, or if it has made my life more interesting or meaningful, then it is influential too.

And finally, if I have moved beyond mere functional use of the product, to an emotive relationship with the brand, that would constitute influence too — though I sometimes wonder how an abstract non-living thing such as a brand can have such profound emotional power over human beings. But it happens, so it must be true.

TATA is more than a brand On all these criteria, the most influential brand in my life, by far, has been the TATA brand. It has shaped my life, as a person, a marketer and a consumer. Of course, this may be a biased point of view, because I have been working with the TATA group for the past three decades. During this long period, the values and character of this brand have influenced me profoundly as a person. This may also have something to do with the fact that, during these thirty long years, I have been part of many happy, proud and successful teams that have built powerful brands of the TATA group such as Tata Tea, Chakra Gold Tea, Tanishq, Titan, Fastrack and Sonata.

But then the influence of TATA is also to do with the fact that my wife and I use so many TATA brands in our daily lives. At home, we use Tata Salt, Tata Tea and Tetley green tea, all the time. I drive a handsome blue Tata Zest car, one that I am very proud of. Both my wife and I love our Titan Edge watches, and we turn to Tanishq and Titan Eye Plus for our jewellery and eyewear needs. Our favourite restaurant in Mumbai is the Konkan Café at Taj President, again a Tata brand. Sometimes, a brand goes beyond just wielding high influence, to becoming intertwined into the fabric of your life. For me, TATA is such a brand.

The joy of Amul Moving on to other brands, I must speak about the enormous influence that AMUL has had on me. Here is a brand that has influenced me because it is proudly Indian, totally trustworthy, and has provided me wonderful products such as Amul butter, cheese and ice-cream, all of which I love.

It has also made my life more interesting through the Amul Girl and her humorous take on topical incidents, which never fail to bring a smile to my face. I must confess that my weekend movie dinners these days are never complete without an Amul kulfi, a most delicious product which I strongly recommend, and which I have discovered only recently, after moving home to Mumbai two years ago.

Google is everywhere To discover so many other things, I rely on another brand which silently crept into my life a few years ago, and now wields extreme daily influence. Oh, what would I do without Google? Indeed, what would my wife and daughter, and all of us, do without Google? It has become not just our favourite search engine, but our window to the world. I need Google to search for the latest news, for the schedule of next week’s IPL cricket matches, to locate reviews of recent and vintage movies, to search for the best priced mobile phone to buy, and to check on the latest images of my favourite Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra. If Google went out of our lives, the world would surely go down with a bang or at least a bing. Google is also cool to use, and the Google Doodle has added one more nice, small point of interest in my hectic daily schedule.

A New Balance To combat the effect of these hectic daily schedules, I also love running and working out in my gym. The brand which has influenced me greatly in this sphere is my all-time favourite brand of shoes, New Balance. With their unique multiple widths, and greater selection of sizes, my perfectly sized pair of New Balance shoes fits me like a glove. New Balance offers superb quality, they last and last forever. These shoes have become so fundamental to my life that I often request my sister, who lives in the US, to bring a new pair across for me, particularly since this brand is not widely available in India. The current pair which I am using, bright orange in colour and light as a feather, is a joy to wear each morning. These shoes have brought a new balance into my workouts and my life.

While many readers would have used brands such as TATA, Amul and Google, I suspect only a few of you would have used a brand such as New Balance which, truly speaking, is not as widely known in India as other famous footwear brands. Yet it is a brand which has had huge influence on me. Perhaps in each of our lives there exist one or two such brands, not amongst the most influential nationally, but prominent in our own personal corners of influence.

The forbidden Apple This brings me to the fifth and final brand on my list. This has to be Apple. Personally, I don’t use Apple products, except for an ageing Apple iPad, because they are somehow not my type. But I must confess that the brand has deeply influenced my thinking as a marketer.

The brilliant marriage of design and technology which Apple has repeatedly crafted, the simple and minimalistic point of view which it has brought to the world, its reinvention of so many categories, the fabulous Apple stores, the magic of Steve Jobs, its founder — all this explains why Apple is cool, why it is perhaps the first mainstream cult brand on our planet, and why it has deeply impacted marketers such as me. Because I think of Apple so often, I know I am influenced by this brand, even if I don’t love it.

I would love to hear which brand has influenced you most, and why. Please do write in, and let me know.

Harish Bhat is author of the bestseller book “Tata Log: Eight modern stories from a timeless Institution”. These are his personal views. He can be reached at bhatharish@hotmail.com

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