Branding it right: Review of Ambi Parameswaran’s new book, ‘All the World’s a Stage’

Ambi Parameswaran’s go-to handbook on how a personality, or company, may be reinvented with the help of various tools

Sticking true to its Shakespearean title, which invokes the idea that life is but a grand performance, Ambi Parameswaran gives a shout-out that, believe it or not, all of us are our own ‘personal brands’. His latest venture is a mini-guide, almost a pocketbook, for anyone who wants to build and understand the potential that can be unlocked by consciously building their brand.

As opposed to his earlier work such as Sponge, an insider account of his marketing days, or Nawabs, Nudes and Noodles, which maps out India’s socioeconomic landscape through advertisements, All the World’s a Stage solely focuses on the concept of personal branding. He explores how young professionals can build their brand within or outside a company, how a company’s brand and a personal brand can exist in tandem (or can it?), how social media should be used to maximise the reach of one’s brand and so on.

Written as a conversation between four friends of the 1994 IIM Calcutta batch at their silver reunion, the prose is light, quick and easy to grasp. Ambi, the marketing guru, and Shankar the automobile engineer-cum-marketing sceptic, are joined by Kunal and Rita who work with finance and human resources respectively. Bringing in perspectives about brand-building in different workplaces, the writer explains why having a personal brand is important in every profession.

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Two fundamental questions that the book tries to address are the dichotomy between corporate and personal branding and the role of social media. On social media, the friends establish the importance of social intermediaries, and how in today’s day and age, a digital footprint could make or break a person.

The book ends with Mahatma Gandhi, whom the author calls ‘the most enduring personal brand out of India’. While the tag of ‘brand’, used for Gandhi who is known for his simplicity and austerity, can be grating, the author takes us through the Mahatma’s journey, how he changes his way of dressing when he is a barrister to when he becomes his khadi-clad self, and how he understood the importance of effective communication by writing in both English and Gujarati and starting his own newspaper. The book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to establish his or her own brand.