Today, I was trying to analyse some of my gravest personal failures. One of the domains I don’t understand and am not good at is “branding”.
We have iit alumni who have done really well as marketing people in consumer cos. But I cannot think of even one who has excelled in an advertising agency globally.
However, no one admits the lack of competence. Further to add insult to injury – many of us even pretend to be experts.
The entire PanIIT branding is one such fiasco.
It all started around 1996. Gyanesh Chaudhry and late RK Gupta had successfully started the iit Kanpur alumni group with some very active volunteers in Delhi. Satish Kaura for example was an enthusiastic supporter. So was Saurabh Srivastava – both of whom got Padma Sri’s later on.
When Prof Nag, former Director of IITB heard about the IITK efforts at building an alumni association, SBI Caps where he was a Director offered to fund either creating a similar organisation for IITB or merging with the IITK effort. I was made the first head of this iitb initiative and for a while was the sole member.
Prof Nag did not like the name “IIT Kanpur and Bombay Alumni Party”.
He suggested that I lead the effort from the iitb side and find professional help. I called Diwan Arun Nanda at Rediffusion and someone at Lintas. Both did not show any interest in working on this. I then dialled Mrinalini Gupta, the only branding expert I knew, who was delighted to be part of this.
It was a cold winter evening and we all agreed to meet at a pan Asian restaurant in the market opposite the main gate of IIT Delhi.
Like any diligent advertising account Director, Mrinalini took out her diary to take a “client briefing”. We went around in circles. We had no vision. What would this entity do ??
RK Gupta shared how successful their chaat party had been – so we could do larger and more frequent foodie get togethers. Alumni could come with families, relish street food and play tambola. This sounded like a plan.
Now all we needed was a nice name. Mrinalini asked one key question – would membership be one or would it be “iit wise”. She came up with a brand “PanIIT” – it was all about food just like pan Asian food. But indicated the consumer side and not the supply side. Everyone liked the name instantly.
The iit Kanpur chaat party still continues. RK Gupta is no more and Rohit Dhawan now leads it. Gyanesh is still the guiding light and party host. The venue is always the Arya Orphanage.
PanIIT in hindsight was a branding disaster. And a conceptual one. Later on, we tried to refresh the brand. What the mandated agency came up with was a bigger disaster. We could not trademark or copyright the name. Tens of PanIIT entities emerged. The brand was ruined, misused and much abused.
Tomorrow the Global Board of the IIT Alumni Council meets again. Mrinalini Gupta will lead the discussion, a good 29 years after she came up with the magical word “PanIIT”.
PanIIT needs to be discarded now.
