Marketing Mixology: A No-Jargon Guide to Success in Brand-Building

The Hindu

10-07-2025

Published : Jul 10, 2025 14:42 IST - 4 MINS READ
I finished reading Ambi Parameswaran's Marketing Mixology the same day I came across a rather mournful article on the future of business consulting in the age of artificial intelligence (AI)—an article that had the air of an obituary. It offered dire predictions about what might happen to human-led strategy once machine-led optimisation took over. It was, in a way, the perfect mood-setter for Parameswaran's book because it allowed me to approach Marketing Mixology from two perspectives: one that looks at the craft of marketing as we have traditionally known it, and the other reluctantly adjusted to the LED glow of a world where bots have started writing press releases, proposals, and brand kits and automating sales funnels.
The book is structured around what Parameswaran calls 'four essential ingredients for marketing success': understanding the consumer, building the brand, selling and negotiation, and communication. It is a neat quartet, but Parameswaran is not trying to be flashy here. In fact, Marketing Mixology is notable for its refusal to pander to the usual genre tropes of self-congratulatory business books. It has no tortured or clichéd acronyms. It also stays away from those overcooked metaphors that make many, like me, put away business books instantly. And there are no proclamations about paradigm shifts.
Marketing Mixology: Four Essential Ingredients for Marketing Success
By Ambi Parameswaran Westland Business Pages: 172 Price: Rs.350
Instead, what we get is a slow-brewed collection of stories, frameworks, reflections, folk tales (Birbal makes an appearance, as he should), case studies and occasional theoretical nudges, all delivered in a matter-of-fact tone that suggests Parameswaran has been teaching the same lesson in various rooms for decades and still is not bored of it.
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This is a small compact book. The prose is simple. The jokes are gentle and often self-effacing. One gets the sense that the author has spent enough time in conference rooms where the air-conditioning is more aggressive than the marketing plan, and he is here to talk plainly. 'Intelligent marketing professionals do both: understand data and also understand consumers,' he writes, and this feels like common sense—until you realise how many campaigns are built on the exact opposite assumption.
Anecdotal account
Parameswaran blends anecdotes from his years of experience in advertising and brand consulting with empirical insights, old-fashioned wisdom, capsuled insights from marketers that made it big, and the occasional chart. But at no point does he try to position himself as a guru. He is closer to the seasoned colleague who knows how the procurement head thinks, where the bottleneck is buried, and when not to press 'send' on the big client mailer. In one moment where he discusses the art of negotiation, he recounts missing a connecting flight in London en route to Chicago. What happens next is a simple, almost throwaway incident—but it lands as an allegory for one of the fundamentals of negotiation: Just ask.
While this book does not offer grand insights, it respects the intelligence of the reader. There is no evangelical promise here that branding will save your company. What Parameswaran does instead is remind us that branding is the act of listening—really listening—to what the consumer wants, fears, buys, and does not talk about in surveys.
Parameswaran, who has straddled advertising, strategy, and brand stewardship with equal competence,has become something of a chronicler of the marketing industry—writing books not just about brand-building, but also about religion, rejection, personal growth, and the business of advertising itself.
Marketing Mixology may not be his most ambitious book, but it might be one of his most useful. For younger readers, it serves as a practical toolkit without the jargon. For older readers, it is a gentle reminder of the deep human intelligence that underpins good marketing—an intelligence that no AI can yet convincingly simulate.
Ultimately, what I found most refreshing about this book was how it avoided noise. In an age when marketing advice is available in 90-second reels, Parameswaran offers a long-form antidote: calm and deeply grounded. It is the reassuring voice of someone who still believes that a brand is built on trust and time.
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In a world where AI might soon be writing banner copy and predicting click-through rates with uncanny accuracy, this book emphasises human judgment and reminds us that clarity, empathy, and experience are not (yet, and that is a big yet) programmable. That is reason enough to read this book. And perhaps reason enough to keep your consulting gig, for now.
If one were to nitpick—and what is a review without a little nitpicking—Parameswaran could have offered a longer list of curated resources, especially for readers looking to dig deeper into each theme. An index of topics would not have hurt either.