Did Rajiv Bajaj fight with his dad for branding his mobike?

Brand gurus, step aside. Rajiv Bajaj can give you a lesson or two in branding. Or strategy. Or how less is more in business.

The MD and CEO of Bajaj Auto, the man behind the Pulsar’s marketplace success, has just delivered a serious lesson on branding that ought to go into a case study or an IIM lecture. In an interview to The Economic Times, he tells journos that Bajaj is less an engineering company than a marketing one, and in marketing perceptions are all (Do read the full interview here ).

And if perceptions require you to manufacture a fight with your dad, so that you can establish you own brand idea, so be it. The reference here is to his dad Rahul Bajaj, whose scooters once ruled India but Rajiv advocated (and ensured) euthanasia for the Bajaj Chetak - the once ubiquotous scooter, the Pappa, Mamma, Chunnu, Munnu di gaddi.

So were his differences with dad on strategy just make-believe? You judge. He told the newspaper this: “We are now less in the engineering and more in the marketing industry. We have to be perceived to be different, with credibility; and there are also not too many tech levers to do this. For this, you might have to create a perception that you are at loggerheads with your father and will refuse to ever make scooters - thereby creating a perception that I am wedded to the Pulsar. I believe that one day everybody will buy powerful bikes; it may take five years or 15 years, but you have to direct the whole organisation in that direction. Strategy is nothing but specialisation.”

Among the points he makes are the following:

On his brand and the competition: “In my view, the word that Honda owns is quality, that Hero owns is mileage and the one word Bajaj owns is power, thanks to the Pulsar. If it’s Yamaha, that word is style. The one word that TVS owns is cheap (not in a bad sense) but as in the least expensive.”

On how he manages his brands_:_ “We don’t manage our brand. Our brand manages us.”

On his strategy_:_ Between having many products for one market or one product for many markets, or many products for many markets, his preference is the second one - one product for all markets.

The Bajaj brand_:_ It’s good to get people to work for this company, but it’s not a name he would choose for his mobikes.

On his corporate philosophy_:_ Growth for the sake of growth is like a “cancerous cell”. “This is how most companies destroy themselves.”

Go on, we enjoyed this read. Anyone with even a nodding interest in branding should not miss this great interview .