As yoga's popularity has grown into a $6 billion business, a cast of successful

entrepreneurs has emerged with their own styles of the ancient practice. Yet
yoga's rise underscores a larger question for Professor Rohit Deshpand: Is
everything brandable?
by Kim Girard
Harvard Business School Professor Rohit Deshpand often asks his
marketing students a show-stopping question: Is everything brandable
and should everything be brandable?
So when he read a November 2010 New York Times piece on the tensions
between traditional practitioners who wanted to "take back yoga" from
celebrity teachers with newfangled twists on the ancient practice, the word
"brand" jumped out at him.
"What had me intrigued was that there was this controversy," says
Deshpand, the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing. "There were
strong positions taken by a number of people. It wasn't just a descriptive
story."

THERE ARE TWO ELEMENTS OF BRAND

AUTHENTICITY, AND THEY APPEAL TO TWO
DIFFERENT SORTS OF PEOPLE
Deshpand decided that the business of yoga would make a lively teaching
case for his class of entrepreneurs in the School's Owner/President
Management Program, with plenty of lessons about branding and competitive
strategy.

TWO PATHS
In Branding Yoga, cowritten with HBS Global Research Group associate
director Kerry Herman and research associate Annelena Lobb, Deshpand
examines the different paths of two successful yoga teachers.

There's Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram yoga in America, who has
aggressively fought to patent his approach to traditional yoga style. Then there
is the former model and ballet dancer Tara Stiles, who isn't particularly
interested in yoga's roots or rules, but rather in mixing up different styles of
yoga to create a beneficial exercise.
"There are two elements of brand authenticity, and they appeal to two different
sorts of people," Deshpand says.
The enterprising Bikram, born in 1946 in Calcutta and known worldwide by his
first name, began studying yoga as a four-year-old under his guru Bishnu
Ghosh. He arrived in America in 1971, opening his first studio in Los Angeles
and teaching traditional Hatha yoga to students including Shirley MacLaine.
Bikram built his business slowly. In 1979, he wrote Bikram's Beginning Yoga
Class. He also trademarked his company's name, Bikram's Yoga College of
India. In 1994, he began offering intensive courses, training 200 teachers per
year, according to the case.
Worried that competitors were copying his teachings and techniques, Bikram
decided in 2002 to patent a typical 90-minute class, which consists of 26
postures and two breathing exercises in a room heated to 105F. Hundreds of
cease-and-desist letters were slapped on competing studio owners.
The Indian government, meanwhile, took umbrage with Bikram's legal claims,
arguing that yoga was part of the country's traditional knowledge. The
government put together a panel of 100 historians and scientists that began
cataloging 1,500 yoga poses found in ancient texts written in Sanskrit, Urdu,
and Persian. The goal was not to challenge Bikram in court, the case explains,
but rather to keep others from following his proprietary example.

By 2011, there were some 5,000 Bikram Yoga studios

worldwide. Deshpand notes that in a world where the majority of yoga

teachers were just scraping by Bikram succeeded through strategic use of

branding and legal protections. Bikram also gained an edge by starting early
in the United States and understanding yoga's commercial potential.
"He's very good at marketing the business, but especially on the branding
side, he understood the importance of the Bikram brand," he says. "It wasn't
about yoga, it was about Bikram yoga, and he had to establish what the
difference was. His story was all about understanding that you needed legal
protection for your branding."

THE STILES APPROACH

Tara Stiles, meanwhile, found success in yoga her own way. She had studied
ballet before launching a brief modeling career with the Ford Agency. Her
early experiences of yoga were personal and drew from several different
traditions. "It felt right and natural, not rigid with a certain style," she said. Yoga
"gurus" she had encountered in New York put her off.
Stiles used Facebook to promote yoga classes taught out of her apartment
and offered private sessions. She also blogged about yoga forWomen's
Health and the Huffington Post. In 2008, after opening her own studio, Strala
Yoga, the popular doctor and self-help author Deepak Chopra hired Stiles as
his personal yoga instructor, a huge endorsement.
Stiles created controversy because she was "making yoga cool," Chopra said
in the case. "We are basically breaking the rules, improvising, adding music; in
our minds, connecting the younger generation. In society, brands that succeed
stay relevant."
Stiles hasn't patented her classes, but in 2010 she did publish a book
called Slim Calm Sexy Yoga and launched a yoga DVD under Jane Fonda's
"Team Fonda" fitness brand. In addition, she and Chopra collaborated on the
iPad app Authentic Yoga. Those actions spurred some instructors to label her
a sellout, but Deshpand is more measured.
"Tara Stiles appeals to a much younger demographic than Bikram," he says.
"She's not as regimented in her form of yoga. There's no Sanskrit in her yoga.
Bikram is about Sanskrit. Bikram is about India. She's quintessentially
American."

ADDING VALUE
Deshpand taught the case for the first time this past spring, drawing a lively
debate among participants who were divided on whether the
commercialization of yoga is appropriate.
"The discussion was very heated," he says. "The argument against it is that
religion is something that is very personal, and that it should not be
commercialized."

IT WASN'T ABOUT YOGA, IT WAS ABOUT BIKRAM

YOGA
(The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) has weighed in on the debate as well.
The organization launched an awareness campaign called "Take Back Yoga
Bringing to Light Yoga's Hindu Roots." The goal was not to convert yoga
devotees to Hinduism, according to the organizers, but rather to have them
acknowledge the connection.
HAF cofounder and board member Aseem Shukla wrote a 2010 piece for
the Washington Post's On Faith column called "The Theft of Yoga." In it,
Shukla blasted the "facile complicity of generations of Hindu yogis, gurus,
swamis, and others that offered up a religion's spiritual wealth at the altar of
crass commercialism."
The other side of the argument focuses on business rather than religion. "It's
all about creating value for a large audience. By using marketing and branding
you can be more effective and bring [your product] to a larger audience,"
Deshpand says.

CREATING VALUE
"Branding Yoga" is one of five branding cases Deshpand uses in his classes
to explore how companies create brands that are differentiated and worthy of
a price premium. In addition to yoga, he cites the bottled water industry as an
example.

"You get this stuff for free out of your faucet," he says. "With Evian or Dasani
you pay $2, $4, and that's the reaction consumers have: 'You are just
attaching a fancy name on it, which costs me money.' "
It's up to the company to add value to that brand to make it worth the price,
stresses Deshpand. Participants also tackle how to leverage a brand
globally, build a multibrand portfolio, and defend a brand against competition.