Icons are defined as ideas that are a symbol of their times and 'Iconic Brands' as well perform the same role in our consumption driven society. It probably requires the benefit of hindsight to distinguish the real icons of an era and doing it for the recent past is always tricky given how much of the real substance of certain brands is really drenched in hype...when every second brand is claiming to be the spirit of new India, which ones will realy be remembered 20 years from now remains to be seenHere is taking a shot at a few icons from the 1980s- I think the central event of the decade was the coming to power of Rajeev Gandhi, who despite all his flaws brought a refreshingly modern world-view to India and for a couple of years we were all enrolled in it till he lapsed back into the politics of the past...i think at his best he represented youth, progressiveness, professionalism, a world-class standard of doing things and by being that repositioned the past (mostly to do with his mother and her coterie) as regressive, feudal and dated. And riding on that spirit were three brands which did exactly the same repositioning to the respective incumbents in those categories. The icons for the 80s in my opinion would be Maruti, Hero Honda and Titan - b rands that actually did a Rajeev Gandhi on Ambassador, Bajaj Sccoters and HMT. Only Bajaj, of the incumbents, has been able to reinvent itself and among the icons Titan has probably lost a lot of its iconic appeal by continuing to did deeper into a category fast losing its relevance. If one were to conjecture on the iconic brands of the 1990s, what would they be?
Any guesses?
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