‘Brief Case: How Brands Create Desire, Trust and Culture’, by advertising veteran Dr Sanjay Arora, is now open for pre-order on Amazon India ahead of its publication on September 21 by Penguin Business, an imprint of Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade publisher. Penguin Business commissioned Dr Arora to write the book after his marketing stories had become immensely popular online, both in India and internationally, garnering over 25 million views a month. The book examines forty brands across six sections, among them Colgate, Maggi, Parle-G, Bisleri, Blinkit, Nespresso, Red Bull, Dyson, Patagonia, Toyota, Tropicana, De Beers, LEGO, Spotify and Walmart. Each chapter closes with three plainly stated marketing lessons.

 

“There are many, many books on marketing theory and frameworks which are good only for academicians and hard-core practitioners not accessible or interesting to the normal man. I decided to change that and have written them as engaging short stories each rich with verified data and facts, each doubling up as a mini case study hence the name ‘Brief Case’. This makes them highly engaging and as an icing on the cake is that each of the 40 stories ends with three marketing lessons which can be put to immediate use” says the author Sanjay Arora. The book is a result of deep research and a substantial part of the book is devoted to correcting widely repeated industry accounts that do not survive checking. Among them is the identity of the child on the Parle-G wrapper, a mystery that has generated decades of speculation and at least three names printed in the press.

 

The figure is an illustration, developed by the Everest Advertising creative team in the 1960s, a fact Parle Products has itself confirmed. Dr Arora later worked at Everest, in the mid-1980s. “The stories our industry tells about itself get repeated until they harden into fact,” said Dr Arora. Sanjay, a PhD in Brand Management, Marketing Communication & Consumer Behaviour, has an MBA, and modules in Brand Management & Digital Marketing from IIM, Bangalore. He has been often featured on various news channels like CNN- News18 and NDTV with his unique insights on marketing and business.