BACK OF THE BOOK

One sure way to set the species apart, someone must've found, was to create art (okay, all ye quadripeds, try that!). The quadripeds struck back by having their butts branded with hot iron for instant identification. Modern marketers are pleased to report that we bipeds have gone one-up on this too-just look at the cover jacket of this book.

Written by brand differentiation experts Steve Rivkin and Fraser Sutherland, The Making of a Name: The Inside Story of the Brands We Buy features a mock-up of Levi Strauss & Co.'s famous leather patch. Labels, of course, have been around quite awhile longer than this brand of jeans. Labels, big and small. Labels, thick and sticky. It's the brand-aware who make it a matter of self-given freedom of choice; who see in the weft n' waft (or rivet furnaces) of denim the fabrication of a rugged myth; who chuckle at their own silliness; and who choose a brand that's only too pleased to shear itself to its bare no-nonsense essence (or 'morpheme', a minimal unit of meaning).

Ah, but let's not rivet our attention on jostling jeans. This is actually a book about names, and it begins innocently with Shakespeare's "What's in a name?" before going all academic. It does a professorial job of raking up etymology and morphology (the study of word forms) for the cause of business and its relationship with people's minds (and wallets). And boy, a casual relationship it sure ain't. In a world of discourse on McWorld and Coca-colonisation, brands are big. Brands are not to be ignored.

THE MAKING OF A NAME By Steve Rivkin & Fraser Sutherland Oxford University Press PP: 276 Price: Rs 1,232

An innocent book it is, but provokes the brand-aware-or those we think they're brand-aware-all the same. How so? With stories of brand origins that sound a little too pat for comfort. As if they're itching to set the record straight in some way. Is Apple an "arbitrary name" that struck Steve Jobs simply as a "perfect fruit", or is it an "allusive name" with a forbidden byte of knowledge? Does Duracell work so durably because it's "short, crisp and concise" in offering a benefit, or does it convey something more? Is Viagra suggestive of 'vigour' and 'Niagara', or a place 'via Agra' that gave the Mughal emperor Akbar an heir and legacy?

It's open to interpretation, surely. The few Indian references, by the way, are even more huh-worthy. Now, now, now, Yes Bank couldn't be inspired by egg.com, could it? A good thing this book stays away from the 'K' craze in entertainment. You never know what it might've ascribed it to, given how blissfully it credits the 1930s' travel writer Geoff Moorhouse with coining the name of an entire country, no less.

Still, the huh-after-huh experience is stirring enough to recommend a read. And there's more. A good name, the authors theorise, "sets up a communication premise" via associations and implications to make its selling proposition clear. While on clarity, Rivkin and Sutherland are in their element talking about language. Take the chapter The Sound Of Sales-on the origin of speech. They quote the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen's theories, "each with evocative labels", on how mankind first learnt to speak: from 'Bow-wow' (imitating sounds of nature) and 'Pooh-pooh' (expressing instincts) to 'Yo-he-ho' (grunting at work) and 'La-la' (singing in poetic love).

Oral exertions have sure come a long way since. Or maybe not. Among the nuttier parts of the book is the bit about Coca-Cola in China, where the great globaliser stumbled from a phonetic version of the brand that sounded like 'bite the wax tadpole' to the more saleably stretched 'happiness in the mouth'. It worked.

For those to whom brand stretching is about snuggling onto a different product altogether, the book cites the instance of Lycra, an elastic fibre brand that threw open its doors as a hospitality banner in Brazil, and under no compulsion beyond the need for wider brand appeal. "The ultimate branding," though, goes the book, "occurs when a name, image, and delivery system fuse into a seamless entity." An example? L'eggs, which sells in egg-packaging, the hosiery brand from Hanes... yes, of 'no scratchy labels' fame in the Indian undies market. Another fun brand that gets itself off by poking pomposity.

The point, dear Naomi Klein, is this. To be brand-aware is to be discerning: of ideas, of ideals, of propositions. Logo or no logo, genuine brands do exist. As do honest science and earnest art. And there's no better economic stimulant than all those voluble voices vying freely with one another, brand message upon message. It's called an 'open market'. It's noisy, yes, and full of cons too. But even a roar can make music-if it's a coherent roar. For truth.

-Aresh Shirali

TRANSFER PRICING By V.S. Wahi Snow White Publications PP: 420 Price: Rs 595

As cross-border business expands, issues and complexities of transfer pricing are occupying increasing space in management minds. It's but a natural upshot of globalisation. "When enterprises of a group have business activities in different countries, they can determine the level of taxation in a particular country by adjusting the price mechanism," as the author, Chief Commissioner of Income Tax V.S. Wahi explains, "They can also employ methods to minimise their tax liability; by shifting their profit base, from high to low tax jurisdictions." Indeed, price jugglery can dodge taxes by exploiting different tax codes in different parts of the world, and there are full-time minds on the job in companies nowadays.

But the world's tax administrators are nobody's fools; they are furiously plugging all the holes. This informative book, aimed at both business managers and tax administrators in India, is written with the expertise of one who has watched transactions closely for signs of shadiness. It goes into the details of transfer pricing regulations in India and other countries, explaining the "arm's length principle" and the like. Entire chapters are devoted to India's taxation treaties with other countries and the perplexities thrown up by e-commerce. The book is also a reminder that frictionless commerce in a borderless world is still just a dream.

THE FINAL SETTLEMENT By Sundeep Waslekar Strategic Foresight Group PP: 110 Price: Rs 250

This is the sort of title that causes gulps to go down throats. That The Final Settlement: Restructing India-Pakistan Relations is authored by Sundeep Waslekar, a hardnosed peace analyst at the Strategic Foresight Group, just adds to the taut nerves. While the two neighbours have wisely avoided the prejudgments of the West Asian kind (the 'writing on the wall' planned for Jerusalem), crunching a two-decade timeframe into a two-year peace dash could prove reckless. "No loc hardening" versus "No division" is still sinking in; so why rush the 'final' talks?

Waslekar's purpose is to induce urgency-moderated with realism. "If India is serious about being a lion with four heads that looks around in all directions with confidence, it should be aspiring to negotiate the formulation of global political and economic structures," he writes. "We believe the desire for peace is as genuine as the obstacles impeding it." Pakistan's "identity crisis" apart, an impending water crisis has set the danger clock ticking, he cautions, and an overarching solution must emerge from the principle of unity. Before time runs out.