Three plus decades in advertising, and I find myself returning to a 3,000-year-old epic for the most relevant business playbook of 2025. The irony isn’t lost on me—here I am, armed with every modern tool imaginable, only to discover that every profound truth about brand building was already encoded in the Ramayana.
Yesterday, while wrestling with a heritage FMCG brand’s positioning challenge—demanding breakthrough thinking, pushing beyond safe category conventions—I had an unsettling revelation. We kept circling back to competent but derivative solutions. Safe, yes. Groundbreaking? Not even close. It was then that Ram’s fourteen-year exile flashed through my mind, and suddenly, everything clicked.
The Ramayana isn’t just mythology—it’s the ultimate masterclass in brand building, leadership, and the kind of transformative thinking our industry has tragically abandoned.
The Exile Principle: Embracing the Wilderness
Ram’s exile wasn’t punishment—it was preparation. Fourteen years in the forest, away from palace comforts, learning resilience, building alliances, understanding the terrain that others feared to traverse. This is precisely what’s missing in modern brand building.
We’ve become palace dwellers. Comfortable in our template thinking, our focus-grouped safety nets, our committee-approved mediocrity. We’ve forgotten that transformative brands are built in the wilderness—in that uncomfortable space where conventional wisdom doesn’t apply and shortcuts don’t exist.
Look at Amul. For seven decades, they’ve occupied the wilderness of bold, politically charged commentary while every other brand plays it safe. Their topical campaigns don’t emerge from boardroom consensus—they’re birthed from a willingness to stand in exile from conventional FMCG marketing. That little girl in polka dots has become India’s most trusted brand voice precisely because Amul never sought the comfort of the palace.
Patagonia embodies this globally. When Yvon Chouinard transferred ownership to environmental trusts, effectively exiling himself from traditional capitalist success, he demonstrated that transformative brand building requires leaving the palace of conventional business thinking. Their ‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ campaigns weren’t safe—they were wilderness territory that redefined what brand purpose could mean.
The Sita Principle: Unwavering Core Values
Sita’s Agnipariksha—the trial by fire—demonstrated that authentic values withstand the most extreme scrutiny. In brand building, clarity of purpose isn’t a positioning statement crafted in a boardroom—it’s what survives when everything else burns away.
Tata embodies this across generations. When Ratan Tata walked away from the Nano project despite massive investments because it wasn’t delivering the promised value, that was Agnipariksha. When they refused to compromise on employee welfare during the Mumbai terror attacks, staying with injured staff regardless of cost, they passed their trial by fire. The result? A conglomerate so trusted that ‘Tata’ has become synonymous with integrity itself.
Ben & Jerry’s has consistently passed their Agnipariksha by standing firm on social values even when it hurt sales. When they supported Black Lives Matter, criticised police brutality, and took controversial political stances, they risked alienating customers. But authenticity tested through fire creates unshakeable brand loyalty.
The Hanuman Principle: Resourcefulness Over Resources
When tasked with finding Sita, Hanuman didn’t wait for perfect conditions or unlimited budgets. He leaped across an ocean using nothing but conviction, creativity, and courage. This entrepreneurial spirit built legendary brands—and it’s being systematically killed by our obsession with process over possibility.
Boat transformed personal audio in India not through superior resources but by reimagining what young consumers wanted. They didn’t have Sony’s R&D or Apple’s design legacy. They made the leap anyway. Today, they’ve dethroned global giants.
Dollar Shave Club disrupted a century-old duopoly with a single viral video and minimal budget. They asked a simple question—’Why are razors so expensive?’—and leaped. That Hanuman spirit turned into a billion-dollar acquisition by Unilever.
The Jambavan Principle: The Awakener’s Wisdom
Here’s a character we’ve forgotten—Jambavan, the wise bear who reminded Hanuman of his own power. “You’ve forgotten your strength,” he said, awakening the leap that changed everything. Every transformative brand needs its Jambavan—the voice that reminds them they’re capable of impossible things.
Satya Nadella became Microsoft’s Jambavan. When he took over, Microsoft had forgotten its own strength, drowning in bureaucracy and missed opportunities. He didn’t bring new capabilities—he awakened what was already there. “Our industry does not respect tradition—it only respects innovation,” he declared, reminding Microsoft it could still leap. The result? A trillion-dollar resurgence.
Internally, every organisation needs Jambavans—leaders who don’t just manage but awaken dormant potential. Asian Paints didn’t become category leaders through superior paint chemistry alone. They awakened an entire industry to the possibility that home décor could be aspirational, not functional. That Jambavan wisdom transformed an entire category.
The Kumbhakarna Paradox: The Cost of Sleeping
Ravana’s brother Kumbhakarna was blessed with immense power but cursed to sleep for six months at a time. When finally awakened, he fought valiantly—but always too late. This is the tragic pattern of legacy brands that wake up only when disruption has already arrived.
Kodak invented the digital camera but chose to sleep, protecting film profits. When they finally awakened, the battle was lost. Nokia dominated mobile phones but slept through the smartphone revolution. BlackBerry, Yahoo, Blockbuster—all Kumbhakarnas who possessed power but awakened too late.
The lesson isn’t just about innovation—it’s about conscious vigilance. Apple doesn’t sleep. Every iPhone launch, they’re already working three generations ahead. Amazon doesn’t sleep. While dominating e-commerce, they built AWS, transformed logistics, reimagined grocery retail. Jeff Bezos understood that in business, sleeping means dying.
The Ravana Warning: When Brilliance Meets Blindness
Ravana wasn’t evil incarnate—he was brilliant, accomplished, learned. His ten heads represented mastery across disciplines, yet his ego blinded him to fundamental truths. We’ve become ten-headed marketers—more data, more insights, more capabilities than ever—yet we’re creating derivative sameness at scale.
Remember when Kingfisher Airlines collapsed despite Vijay Mallya’s brilliance? Ten heads of marketing genius couldn’t save a brand built on unsustainable foundations. That’s Ravana’s curse—mastery without wisdom leads to inevitable downfall.
Brands winning today combine deep expertise with profound humility. They know what they don’t know.
The Vanara Sena Principle: Building the Impossible
The Vanara army built a bridge across the ocean to Lanka—an engineering impossibility accomplished through collective will, individual contribution, and unwavering commitment. Every stone, inscribed with Ram’s name, became part of something miraculous.
This is what modern brand building has lost: the patience and discipline to build bridges to impossible destinations, one stone at a time.
Nike’s journey to cultural dominance wasn’t a campaign—it was a bridge built across decades. Each endorsement, each product innovation, each cultural moment a stone inscribed with their brand truth. They didn’t create ‘Just Do It’ overnight. They built toward it systematically over forty years, transforming athletic footwear into cultural currency.
ITC’s evolution from cigarettes to FMCG leadership required building bridges across impossible chasms—from tobacco guilt to food trust. Each brand launch, each distribution battle, each perception shift was a stone in that miraculous bridge. Today, ITC Foods rivals companies that spent decades building those categories.
The Dharma Dilemma: When Purpose Costs Profit
Ram’s unwavering commitment to dharma—even when it cost him personally—is perhaps the Ramayana’s most powerful business lesson. Long-term brand building requires choices that might hurt quarterly results but strengthen generational legacy.
When Infosys’s Narayana Murthy declared “When in doubt, disclose,” he chose dharma over expedience. That foundation became their competitive moat—clients trusted them because their values were tested and proven.
Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan seemed like dharmic idealism when launched. Critics called it naive. But brands like Dove, which stayed true to real beauty values, now deliver 75% faster growth than their traditional counterparts. Dharma, it turns out, isn’t just righteous—it’s remarkably profitable when given time.
The Return Journey: Where Did Our Courage Go?
The industry that gave us Surf Excel’s beautiful stains, Vodafone’s iconic pug, and Cadbury’s celebration revolution has become cautious, calculated, creativity-averse. We haven’t lost our capabilities—we’ve lost our courage.
The Ramayana reminds us that every transformative journey begins with exile from comfort, requires unwavering values under fire, demands leaps across impossible distances, needs awakeners who remind us of our power, and punishes those who sleep through revolutions.
A Final Thought
Perhaps the Ramayana’s greatest lesson is this: The epic was never about Ram alone. It was about Sita’s integrity, Hanuman’s courage, Jambavan’s wisdom, Lakshman’s loyalty, even Ravana’s cautionary pride. Every character played their role in the larger narrative.
In brand building, we’ve become obsessed with hero stories—the visionary founder, the breakthrough campaign, the viral moment. But lasting brands are built like Ram’s bridge—with countless contributions, each stone mattering, each voice adding to the chorus.
Maybe it’s time we stopped searching for the next big thing and started remembering the eternal things. The wisdom was always there. We just forgot how to read it.
What if the future of brand building isn’t about learning something new—but about remembering what we’ve always known?
