Zubin Mehta, the legendary conductor of music, celebrated his 80th birthday recently with a series of stirring concerts in his beloved home town, Mumbai. I had the privilege of attending one of these concerts at the beautiful National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) in South Mumbai. Zubin Mehta is one of the greatest conductors of our time, and in his hand, a mere baton casts powerful magical spells on the entire audience. This time around, he was conducting the famous Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, where he is Music Director for life.

Wizards never age Watching Zubin Mehta perform on stage, I could not believe that he is now 80 years of age. He radiated the energy and youthfulness of a person half his age. For over two hours, he held the audience in rapt attention, his baton conjuring music that could only have flowed out of the heavens themselves. Here was a man who had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras by 1961, a year before I had even been born. And yet he stood and performed on the podium throughout the evening, dressed in his formal black tuxedo and bow tie, and showed not the slightest sign of fatigue. On the other hand, as the concert progressed that evening, the fire in his eyes burned brighter, and the music played deeper and deeper into all our hearts.

Arrayed around him on stage were the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, over 100 expert makers of music. They included musicians on a wide range of instruments — violins, violas, cellos, harps, flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, and the piano. What was truly amazing was that this large orchestra played in perfect unison through complex scores of music, with not a single note out of place. The baton in Zubin Mehta’s hand moved and swayed, sometimes vigorously and at other times gently, weaving a single, sharp enchanting strand of music through this entire universe.

Magic, magic, magic At the concert that evening, there was music composed by Beethoven and by Maurice Ravel. A million fluid notes of music, and one conductor at the centre of it all. Sometimes lilting, sometimes dreamy, sometimes majestic. There were wondrous musical shapes floating towards us — soft corners and sharp edges, flowing into each other most beautifully. There were tremors in the air, as intense, vigorous, furious energy flowed from the maestro’s baton. Here was music that played with your soul, ate into your heart, and echoed in the innermost chambers of your mind. Here was sheer magic.

During the course of the concert, Zubin Mehta also led the Grammy-winning Pinchas Zukerman on the violin, as Beethoven’s violin concerto in D Major, Op. 61, unfolded. That was a particularly memorable piece, in three movements. The concert ended with a stirring piece from Swan Lake , composed by Tchaikovsky, one of the most popular ballets of all time. The audience responded with an unending ovation. We had experienced a magician, a master of his craft.

A few days later, reflecting on this fantastic concert, and now wearing my marketer’s cap, I could not help thinking that all of us in the marketing fraternity want to be magicians too. We marketers want to create magic with our brands, our products and services, much as the famous conductor has done with his baton. So, are there any lessons we can learn from Zubin Mehta?

Beauty and harmony The music of Zubin Mehta is so beautiful because it is so perfect and harmonious. Over a hundred musicians, playing more than 20 different musical instruments, render complex movements in total harmony — not a single note out of place. Even to untrained ears, such harmony creates beauty. The visual impact of the entire orchestra, seated so elegantly and responding to the conductor in total unison, is also beautiful because it reflects symmetry and harmony. As human beings, we seek and love beauty. No wonder the world has fallen in love with Zubin Mehta and his music.

In a similar fashion, the brands that we market have to reflect beauty through perfect harmony if our consumers have to be in love with them. Each element of the brand has to sit in perfect harmony with all other elements, to create a naturally beautiful offering. The core product, the colours and designs, the shape and material of the packaging, advertising, website, ambience of retail stores where the product is showcased — all these elements have to be in absolute harmony with each other, and have to flow from the central concept that the brand is built on.

Pause for a moment, and think of iconic brands such as Apple, or Coca-Cola, or Nike. Reflect on their product, packaging, colours, designs, advertising — and you will see how they sit in perfect harmony with each other, flowing from a single core concept. No wonder consumers love these brands!

Marketer as conductor If a brand has to reflect beauty through perfect harmony, the marketer has to be the conductor of the brand orchestra. Much like Zubin Mehta wields his baton on stage with over a hundred musicians to create perfect music, the modern marketer also has to conduct a vast orchestra to create a perfect brand. The brand orchestra here consists of the consumer insights team, product development team, packaging and design experts, manufacturing and supply chain team, finance professionals, advertising agency, digital agency, media agency, visual merchandising team that dresses up retail stores, training teams that coach salespeople on how to promote the brand, and so many others.

The marketer plays the music conductor’s role here, in ensuring that this vast brand orchestra plays in total unison, to a single score of music which has been composed and well defined. This is very challenging, given the diverse nature of the members of a typical brand orchestra. For instance, the product development team may comprise engineers who like working with numbers and rigour, a brilliant advertising agency may consist of creative mavericks who do not like rigid logic or numbers, the digital agency may have both content and quantitative inclinations, and the finance professionals who influence pricing may only be interested in numbers and profit margins, period. The marketer has to wield his conductor’s baton across these diverse teams, to conjure up the brand, and ensure that it is created with perfect harmony across all its elements.

Practice makes perfect A concert conducted by Zubin Mehta is so perfect because the orchestra has already spent countless hours practising together. Expert musicians who are members of the orchestra rehearse not just in isolation by themselves, but as an entire team, time and again, until the overall effect is perfect. Standard rehearsal schedules for conductors and orchestras stretch to several hundred hours each year.

Marketers can take a cue from this. Do we bring together the diverse teams of our brand orchestra often enough, to talk about our brand, narrate stories of consumers who love or hate our brand, think about what makes our brand really tick in the marketplace, what elements of the brand we need to significantly improve or keep constant? How often do we get the product development people, the consumer insights people, the advertising and media agencies, all the diverse players, into a single room to think, debate, decide and rehearse together each element of the brand? If we need to create brands that are beautiful and harmonious, then constant rehearsals of our brand orchestra are essential. These rehearsals have to be led, of course, by a conductor who has deep knowledge as well as an intuitive feel for the brand. That’s why the role of the marketer is no different from the role that Zubin Mehta plays, when he conducts his orchestra. The question for marketers to ponder over is: How will you orchestrate magic for your brand?

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

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW