Perhaps it’s peculiar that a marketing expert wrote a
marketing book without determining ahead of time how it could help him market
himself and his company.
But for Zain Raj, the reason for writing the book was not to
place himself upon a pedestal. It was to codify a new set of rules and
standards he believes holds great implications for marketing.
“It’s a new approach to building brands,” said Raj while in
transit from one meeting to another. “The traditional model no longer is
relevant. Brands needed to operate in a new market.”
Raj published BrandRituals, How Successful Brands Bond with Customers for Life, in
January of 2012. By then he was already recognized as a branding and marketing
expert. He was CEO of Hyper Marketing Inc. of Chicago, formed by the mergers of
SolutionSet MediaWhiz Partnership (where Raj was President and CEO) and D. L.
Ryan Companies, Ltd. He had previously served as President and CEO of two other
marketing firms, and had held leadership positions at several others.
But when Raj wrote Brand Rituals, he wasn’t thinking
about further polishing his credentials, but about the ways in which marketing
had changed since he began his career in Mumbai, India, in 1984.
Raj writes that building a brand is no longer about
affecting consumer beliefs but about changing customer behavior. The book
presents a four-stage approach to a Brand Ritual:
- Achieve an initial transaction by offering new value for your product or service.
- Magnify consumer attraction by being digital at the core.
- Build connections with relevant innovations and experiences.
- Create a bond between your brand and the customer by aligning on core values. Raj says a higher number of bonded customers is not only possible but absolutely necessary if you and your company want to create sustainable brands that defy competitors for decades.
While Raj has not made the book the centerpiece of his own
marketing efforts, he’s not neglected it. He has written about it on his blog and refers to it or its principles on Twitter.
“My ROI is on satisfaction: To have people say, ‘I just read
the book’ and they got something out of it,” said Raj. “This was to get the
ideas out. I thought people could benefit from it.
“I never thought of it as marketing myself, but it gives me
one more thing in my marketing tool kit.”
While Raj hasn’t focused on his book – after all, he’s busy
running a global marketing conglomerate – his employees have found it useful on
many levels. Not only can and do they use the principles he espouses in the
book, but it gives them added credibility when meeting with clients or
prospective clients.
Oh, yes, and throughout the book Raj uses the term marketeers
to refer to people in marketing. His rationale is that the people who marketing
professionals – the people who try to understand and analyze customer attitudes
and behaviors – should think of themselves as the musketeers, the grenadiers,
the bombardiers on the corporate battlefield. The marketeers.
But whether the reader embraces the term marketeer or marketer, the point of the book is to help them determine ways in which customers can create a bond with a brand to truly make them customers for life. If he can do that, then Raj feels he has succeeded.
