What makes Mahatma Gandhi such an abiding brand?: An essay by Ambi Parameswaran
His face and words are still everywhere: in graffiti, fancy-dress costumes, at protest marches. What does it take for a ‘brand halo’ to endure in this manner?
“Are you saying that our revered corporate name is just a brand,” a senior director asked me once, as I was presenting a corporate ad campaign to a large conglomerate. The question wasn’t one to be scoffed at.
A brand is often equated with products, such as soaps and shampoos, chips and condoms, that exist in generic clusters, distinguishable only by superficial markers such as packaging and positioning.
As the singer Adele succinctly put it, in an interview with Time magazine a decade ago, “I don’t like that word. It makes me sound like a fabric softener, or a packet of crisps. I’m not that.” And yet, we live in an age of branding. Everything and everyone is looking to “build a brand”.
What makes a great one? Management experts will say it starts with a strong core, made up of purpose, mission, conviction, originality.
Arguably, no Indian brand has a stronger core than that of Mahatma Gandhi.
In 2014, a survey by market-research company TRA revealed that Gandhi topped the list of most trusted personalities in India — nearly 70 years after his death.
How did he manage this?
Following years of research as a brand strategist, I have concluded that the Gandhi brand became and remains iconic because it has abiding truths at its core, and these were upheld — and communicated — effectively and extensively.
It is important to add a disclaimer here that Gandhi was not trying to “build a brand”. The image did not come first. Instead, he dedicated his life to a chosen mission, a mass movement against colonialism, and recognised that success would hinge on upholding and effectively communicating the core values of that mission.
In doing so, he left imprints in history. It is these that continue to show up in popular culture.
The icons by which he came to be known — his spectacles, dhoti, walking stick, and the words he lived by — continue to evoke trust, and still inspire and influence.
Gandhi worked hard to present his brand to the public through his writings. As the historian Ramachandra Guha puts it, in Makers of Modern India (2010), any anthologist of Gandhi’s writings is spoilt for choice. There are more than 90 volumes by him to explore. He also set up his own publications, including the newspaper Indian Opinion, weekly journal Young India and weekly newspaper Harijan.
His literary style was in line with the values that shaped his brand: honesty, simplicity, transparency.
A key thread
Gandhi, more than anyone else of his time, I would argue, understood the power of symbols.
British anthropologist Emma Tarlo, in her 1996 book Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India, observes that his sartorial choices were radical for not only were they an attempt to refashion the self, they also simultaneously reshaped the massive textile industry, a pillar of colonial rule in India.
In the simple yet revolutionary step of advocating that Indians make their own clothing, he reclaimed the socioeconomic fabric of a nation, and then reshaped it.
As he wrote in his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927): “During the satyagraha in South Asia I had altered my style of dress so as to make it more keeping with that of the indentured labourer… landing in Bombay, I had a Kathiawadi suit of clothes consisting of a shirt, a dhoti, a cloak and a white scarf all made from Indian mill cloth. But as I was to travel third class from Bombay, I regarded the scarf and the cloak as too much of an incumbrance, so I shed them and invested in an eight to ten annas Kashmiri cap. One dressed in that fashion was sure to pass muster as a poor man.”
Gandhi, then, chose the image of a poor, rural farmer, a sage or a medicant — a man who was one with the common people.
Embodied in his dress now (an outfit so simple, anyone could afford; and an outfit he would not alter, no matter what the event or audience), were symbols of self-sufficiency, independence, simplicity, national pride, strength.
In this way, he achieved the almost-impossible in the world of branding: he managed to be both approachable and venerated at the same time.
New portals
Where he lived would become a symbol too, and a core extension of the brand.
It is easy to forget that Sabarmati Ashram sits on a sprawling 36 acres of riverfront in Ahmedabad.
Gandhi’s had originally set up base about 10 minutes away, at Kocharab Bungalow, the home of a barrister friend. But he wanted his base to represent his ideal lifestyle, which involved farming, animal husbandry, spinning yarn and space for a large shifting population of visitors and collaborators.
So, in 1916, he and his nephew Maganlal Gandhi pooled their resources and donations to buy a plot for an ashram. Ownership was later transferred to the Satyagraha Ashram Trust.
The use of “ashram” (Hindi for spiritual shelter) in the name, and the use of the land as a bustling agrarian homestead, immediately took what could have been viewed as the base of a powerful leader, and turned it into a community space open to all — run by a freedom fighter who was also a farmer and made his own clothes.
Tying together the message, the lifestyle, the ashram and the satyagraha, meanwhile, was music. Gandhi understood the power of music to unify. The songs sung at his morning meetings cut across boundaries of region, religion and language. There were ancient hymns in Sanskrit, and folk songs in Gujarati. His favourite was a hymn, Vaishnav Jan To, written in the 15th century. The lyrics represent the core of the Gandhi brand of honesty, simplicity and truth.
How it ads up
The emergence of a brand around Gandhi was, in many ways, inevitable.
The larger-than-life ideals he espoused, combined with the scale of his mission — and his incredible ability to simplify that mission, communicate it and make it seem attainable — gave him a hyper-real image that was, at the same time, relatable and appealed to every demographic (including large parts of the British public).
His movement was fundamentally inclusive. He did not seek to surround himself only with people who dressed like him or spoke like him, or even agreed with him entirely.
All this worked to create what is regarded, in branding terms, as a halo. Decades later, the halo has held. There are those who disagree with elements of his approach; as there were in his own time. But no one who can say he didn’t live his philosophy; or that his philosophy isn’t an ideal one.
For this reason, anyone who has been in the world of advertising in India a certain number of years, will have used his image or his words, at some point, to bolster the image of a brand. Just his spectacles are a symbol of truth to power.
In my case, it was an ad I helped create for Tata Finance, in 1997, while at FCB Ulka. Tata Finance was seeking to promote its home and vehicle loans. Using an image of Gandhi striding during the Dandi March, the slogan drew on words attributed to him: “Find Purpose. The means will follow.”
For my friend KV Sridhar, erstwhile chief creative officer at Leo Burnett, it was a font inspired by Gandhi’s spectacles. The font was released in 2010, to mark the Mahatma’s 141st birth anniversary. It created a fair amount of buzz for Leo Burnett, and was found to be both nostalgic and fresh, reinterpreting the abiding imagery of Gandhi for a new, customise-everything generation.
Icons for sale?
The use of Gandhi’s ideas and icons in branding is, to be honest, problematic. There are, arguably, ways to do it right.
One of my favourites is the Gujarat-based tea company Wagh Bakri (Tiger Goat), founded by Gandhi-admirer Narandas Desai. He wanted his brand to represent harmony; but presumably did not want to cash in on the words or imagery of the Mahatma himself. So he named his tea after what should be natural enemies, the tiger and the goat.
In the original logo, the two animals drink from one trough, while a rather muscular man joyfully holds up a cup of tea.
Most attempts are less subtle, and some struggle to make the connection between brand and icon.
In 1997, for instance, Steve Jobs oversaw a campaign that sought to promote Apple as the latest in a long line of icons united by the ideal: Think Different. The ad showcased 17 people. Gandhi was one of them.
As author Salman Rushdie wrote in Time magazine the following year, it was odd to see that “Even the greatest of the dead may summarily be drafted into… ad campaigns”. This bony man shaped a nation’s struggle for freedom, Rushdie added, and stood against imperialism and the endless rush towards modern tools. Was it fair that he should have ended up in an ad for Apple?
Perhaps the most egregious use of the Gandhi brand was an effort by Montblanc, in 2009, to launch limited-edition Mahatma Gandhi pens. In India, each would be priced at ₹1 lakh.
The pens came in gold and silver variants, with metres of these precious metals woven around them, apparently in a tribute to Gandhi’s practice of weaving his own clothes!
Thankfully, a petition was filed in an Indian court and Montblanc withdrew the product.
As the petitioner noted: “Gandhi is considered to be an epitome of simplicity, making him a symbol of a British Pounds 16,000 pen is nothing but an attempt to degrade everything that he symbolized.”
The us in trust
Are there lessons to be learnt from all this, in how a brand can be built to last? I have drawn five lessons from my research in this specific niche.
First, it takes time, conviction and commitment. There is no alternative. The brands that endure are those that know themselves, have a larger mission, and remain true to it.
Second, a good brand is built from the inside out. Gandhi evolved, and changed his opinions on certain issues (as all wise people do). He made concessions where he believed they served the larger mission. In each decision, however, one sees an adherence to the larger, unshakeable goals: freedom, truth, transparency, simplicity, harmony.
Third, there is no substitute for good communication. Craft the message, let it be a worthy one, and never stop repeating it.
Fourth, pick powerful symbols. In the world of brand management, this is what corporate social responsibility was meant to help companies do. Rather than finding missions that serve a greater good as an expansion of their core identity, however, many simply choose the path of least resistance, and prime opportunities are squandered.
Fifth, be brave. Venture into areas that are not easy to navigate. Think different. Stand apart.
Isn’t it strange that these lessons should come from a “half-naked fakir”, as Winston Churchill called him, who eventually overthrew the largest empire in modern history?
(Ambi Parameswaran is a brand strategist and best-selling author of 11 books. His latest, All The World’s A Stage, is a personal branding story)
