The Book gives a nice summary on the cover
: Delightfully written, Spark decodes the
art of Brand Building and provides a step by step guide to arriving at insights
that survive the test of time. I refer to the book “Spark – The Insight To Growing Brands” written by Paddy Rangappa. In short – delightful, yes. Step by step guide –
yes; but to what is the question. Is the content good – yes. Is it pertinent –
again, unequivocally, yes. But does it decode the art of Brand Building – regrettably,
no. In my opinion basis 17 years of Sales and Marketing Work Experience, there
is a lot more to building Brands. That said, this is an excellent resource, as
we shall see in this review.
CRAFT
There are many good points in the
book; excellent, stunning insights, and a very practical framework that just
about anyone in any leadership or quasi-leadership role will find very
practical and adaptable to just about any real world situation. The framework
suggested, one of them, is intuitively logical : CRAFT, standing for Conviction-Resources-Approach-Foundation-Teamwork.
As anyone in with work experience will appreciate – this is not only logical,
but a solid approach to any problem the modern corporation places in front of
managers. At more than one place, your basic beliefs to sales, marketing and
business are going to be challenged – with data, mind you! Then why am I so
circumspect, and not going all-out in praise? The reason is the extensive and
major miss in the book, that is an issue. It still is a must read – but in a
review, I have to be, regrettably, honest.
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| Paddy Rangappa |
THE MISSES
I did not state minus – a minus is a
negative or wrong point; a miss is something that has been missed, something
that would have elevated this beyond beyond just good, to the realm of all-time
Management classics. This is in reality a very topical book; one exclusively focused
on Advertising, and especially defence of Advertising Agencies, which is the
impression I got while reading it. Given that the tools are so universally
applicable with just a little re-tooling, I found it a regrettable and compartmentalized
approach. For corporations and business
to reach beyond the ordinary and just good – it requires insightful geniuses
like the author to rise above the mundane inter-departmental traps, and go into
deep thought, and engage with organization-wide processes and approach.
This is the biggest problem in the
modern corporation, and the biggest fault engendered by individualistic western
thought and philosophy, the excessive compartmenatalised focus that is the bane
of Western Management Thought. Throughout the book, I found myself penning yellow
notes, noting the pluses and minuses – and in each, I had to perforce note that
the book takes a majorly limited approach, and misses a big opportunity.
The contention that Brands grow by Advertising
alone does not find favour with me, to be brutally frank. Advertising is but
one element of the marketing mix; the winning brand will be equally good in all
the 4Ps if it has sustained its leadership over a period of time. As the Handset
industry example of Indian brands shows,
weaker elements of the mix can destroy value if the relationship in all the 4Ps
and the fifth P – people – is not well maintained. Brand Building, in fact, has
far more to do with fitment of the Product
with The Market realities, the Price and the Place than it has with the Promotion.
Again, real world examples prove that untimely advertising can actually have a
negative impact. Advertising is a catalyst, not the Prima Donna – that position
has to be reserved for The Product alone.
To be fair, at no point in the book has
a contention of Advertising being the be-all and end-all been made either
explicitly or by implication; and yet, somehow, I carried away the impression that
it does. It isn’t my contention that Advertising isn’t important; a proper
Promotion plan {not just advertising} is a significant contributor to Brand
Growth, the extent of that contribution being a function of the industry the
Brand operates in. That said, when you have such a fantastic and insightful
idea, you could have developed it into a much broader framework… while keeping
the essence of the book intact.
THE PLUSES
The treatment of the misses above
will seem slightly excessive to some people; there is a reason for this
approach – I shall connect it up in the conclusion. Moving on, in the pluses, they
are numerous, and present on virtually every page. This book is one of the most
educative and entertaining books I have read in my extensive readings on
Management, Branding, Marketing and more. It leaves a deep and unforgettable impression,
makes an immediate connect and adds tremendous practical value that I can
actually add and implement in my job. What more can I say?
The core of the book is around CRAFT, and Insights. Insights first – this is the most stunning takeaway from
the book, and the core reason for my apparent disappointment. The concepts of looking
for or finding or discovering insights into any Business Situation is so intuitively
sound, so logically perfect and so deep thought provoking, that it makes this
book a must read all by itself. If we can learn to harness this as a process,
as a defined business approach, our tasks become much easier. Read this book
for this alone – and try and translate the advertising implementation to your
function. Insights can work for any human organized activity, not just advertising.
Now, Craft. Beautiful, in one word; that
is all. One acronym that so superbly drives home the basic approach anyone in
business must have : Conviction
{without this, your mind doesn’t get motivated, ideas may not come, focus may
not be there; Resources {teaches you
to examine all resources, and see if the strategy is doable – something many
brands found out in the real world, covered on my blog earlier}, Approach {A clear doable process – efficient
and aligned; again, gives a roadmap that keeps you in line}, Foundation {Basics, how many Indian Brands
we have seen that forgot the basics leading to massive losses?} and Teamwork {Intuitive fact; Doesn’t require
a mention – but mentioning it specifically is
a massive massive driver on the right path}.Now tell me, how is this limited
to Advertising or Client Agency alone? I am befuddled! There is much much more
in the book – like the ESCAPE case {Engage, Shop, Create, Ascertain, Play, Entertain}
– regarding consumer digital behavior…
This creation of insights requires
deep domain knowledge; as quite clearly, the end result of the process will be
dependent integrally on the questions you initially start off asking, how you
word them – as also the level of free thinking encouraged in your teams. Thus,
intuitively, a top down manager is certainly not going to get the best results,
or optimal results : he may, of course, produce good results basis individual
genius and skills {there are many such good people, granted}. This is among the
biggest take-aways : the importance of a proper team, a statement left unsaid, but
to me it seems logically consistent and intuitively correct that only a free
person can produce insights…
CONCLUSION
I have laid the misses and the pluses
in an honest attempt to review this book. I grant that the author being from
advertising and agency domains, is a domain specialist in his area, and can
thus produce only in his area of expertise. That is why I have rated it 4
stars, one more than what I want to give it. The issue in such an approach is
that we already have a very compartmentalized approach to management nowadays,
and there is a real danger that these excellent learnings and insights will not
be reaching those in other functions who can learn from it. The book is, every
page, top notch. But I find quite a bit of it as having universal application,
or at least a much wider application, to many business areas and functions in
real life. There is a need to distill the specifics into a general rule or theory…
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