Mainak Dhar - Brand Shastra: Use the power of marketing to transform your life

I n the beginning, there was lack of awareness.

Thats probably not how youve heard the beginning of human history described. But in many ways one could argue that is how it all began. All of us know the story of Adam and Eve, placed in the idyllic, uncorrupted Garden of Eden by God. They were free to do all they wanted, other than of course sample the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Then came the first marketer of them allSatanand he did what great marketers have done ever since then: Make what has been in front of us seem suddenly desirable. In this case, from Adams point of view, both the apple and Eve.

And so the apple that had been there all along suddenly became not just any apple, but the Forbidden Fruit. It was a feat of branding that would make many modern marketers proud.

So awareness turned to desire, and desire to trial.

The rest, as they say, is history. Our history; one where we have been made to desire or loathe things, to reject or accept trends, based on how our perceptions towards them have been shaped and influenced. It is through that long history of marketing that the thread of our civilization has been woven. In case youre wondering where marketing fits into all this, lets step back a bit and understand what marketing really is.

When I was in business school at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, more than two decades ago, being introduced to marketing through case studies and textbooks, I might have been forgiven for thinking that marketing was all about constructs and theories, things academicians wrote books about and whose application was limited to the world of business. Since then I have spent two decades on the front lines of marketing and general management in consumer product companies. This experience has made me realize that marketing is both much simpler and infinitely more complicated. It is simpler because, at its core, marketing has very little to do with theories and formulas. Marketing is about something each and every one of us can relate to and understandhuman perceptions, motivations and behaviour. From a child who fakes a tantrum to get what he wants, to a young man who professes his undying real love to get the object of his affection into bed, to the employer who comes up with different employee-engagement programmes to get employees to be more loyal and committed, we are all wired to understand peoples motivations and how to influence their behaviour to meet our needs.

That understanding and shaping of peoples perceptions and behaviour, after all, is what any marketer does, whether its making you feel a bottle of sugar-filled soda somehow represents your youthfulness or whether your mobile phone being represented by a half-eaten fruit or a rotund robot represents the kind of person you are. When I say marketing is infinitely more complicated, it is because there is perhaps nothing more difficult to understand than human motivations and needs. We are fickle, we change, and what we find desirable today becomes old news tomorrow. Thats why professional marketers spend years and millions in research funding trying to understand consumers and understanding how to structure approaches to winning over these consumers. That is also perhaps why I love marketing. Its not just about solving problems in the world of business, but instead its about the here and now, about everyday people making everyday choices. Ive found that understanding the broad concepts of marketing, such as how to position and promote a brand, can unlock something incredibly valuable, much more satisfying than just selling a brand or product. It brings us closer to understanding peoplean understanding of how perceptions, memories and behaviour intersect to drive so many of our day-to-day life choices and help us relate to those around us.