Branding Yoga

Presented by: Smriti MishraG.E.C Rewa

A Harvard business school case analysis

What is yoga?

Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline that originated in ancient India.

YOGA

•The Sanskrit word “yoga” literally meant to yoke and came from the root yuj, meaning “union.” •The earliest Sanskrit verses (circa 1500–1000 B.C.E.), known as the Vedas, contained some themes that may have been antecedents of yoga theories and practices.

• In 2008, almost 16 million people in the U.S. were practitioners of yoga• Their practices ranged from

meditative to highly athletic styles

What are the objectives of the

case?

It focuses on how yoga gurus commercialize the art of yoga for their profitsIt focuses on branding an art and the cultureIt also create awareness of origin of Yoga and the Indian cultureIt also focuses on the different marketing strategies and expanding market for yoga

Branding Yoga: Two different approaches

Approach 1: Bikram Choudhary:the yoga

guru

• Bikram was a yoga guru who promoted yoga in the West during the first half of the 20th century .• In 1971, he arrived in the U.S where

he opened his first studio in Los Angeles• In 1979, Bikram obtained his first

copyright, for his book Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class. He also got a trademark for his company’s name, Bikram’s Yoga College of India.

Who is Bikram Choudhary?

• In 1994, Bikram began to offer an intensive teacher-training course, which led to a rise in the number of Bikram studios.• By 2000,he accelerated his

training program turning about 200 teachers a year.• Teachers were certified after two

months of training

• In 2002, when Bikram learned that other yoga instructors used his methods with other concepts• In 2002, he sent a cease-and-

desist letter to the owners of a yoga studio in Costa Mesa, California. The owners violated his copyright and was fined $150,000 • They reached a settlement in

2003

• By April 2003, Bikram had more than 700 studios in 220 countries. • In 2003, Open Source Yoga

Unity (OSYU), based in San Francisco, California, filed suit against Bikram.• It claimed that his copyrights

and patents were invalid, and that yoga could not be copyrighted. • In 2005, the lawsuit was

settled out of court. • By 2011, some 5,000 of his

studios had opened around the world which earned him about $5 million a year,

• Bikram continued to hunt down perceived copycats and send cease-and-desist letters. In them, he warned practitioners and instructors

Approach 2: Tara stiles-the yoga guru

Who is Tara Stiles?

• She is the former model and ballet dancer who has different styles of teaching yoga• She mix up different styles of

yoga to create a beneficial exercise• Stiles said her early

experiences of yoga were personal and drew from different traditions.

• Through the Ford Agency, she moved to New York in 2000. • In 2006, she went on several fashion

shoots that involved yoga apparel, and the Ford Agency asked her to create and post promotional yoga videos on YouTube.• In 2007, Stiles left Ford. She began to

use Facebook to promote the yoga classes she taught out of her apartment, and offered private sessions.

• In 2008, Stiles opened her own studio, Strala Yoga, in New York’s NoHo district.• She did not use Sanskrit

words for poses or chant in class.• Stiles created controversy

because she was making yoga cool• In 2009, Stiles worked with

automaker Nissan. Nissan sponsored promotional videos that discussed their approaches to exercise.

• In 2010, Chopra and Stiles also released a yoga iPad app, “Authentic Yoga,” and collaborated on a video• Stiles’s book, Slim Calm Sexy

Yoga, was published in the summer of 2010 and was the number-one yoga book on Amazon.com for several months• At the end of 2010, Jane

Fonda reintroduced her fitness brand and debuted “Team Fonda,” a group of fitness instructors with whom she launched new workout videos, including Stiles

• Stiles did not think she would patent her yoga classes, as Bikram had done.

Whether the commercialisation of yoga is appropriate?

• In a way yoga is now being commercialized without its root from the Hindu faith.• The religion is something very

personal and should not be commercialized

• On the other side commercialization of yoga has made the yoga more popular among the masses.

What is HAF?

• Hindu American foundation(HAF) is an advocacy group for Hinduism in the U.S. • In 2008, several members of

the HAF, examined editions of Yoga Journal, which had become a popular American yoga magazine.• They saw no reference to

Hinduism in the magazine and concluded that it associated Buddhism, Jainism, and Christianity with yoga more than it did Hinduism.

• HAF decided to launch “Take Back Yoga—Bringing to Light Yoga’s Hindu Roots.” • The goal of the campaign was

not to convert yoga devotees to Hinduism but to have them acknowledge the connection between them.• HAF began to present the

paper in settings such as the 2009 Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions in Australia

• In March 2011, Sheetal Shah of HAF, Tara Stiles, Dr. Edwin Bryant of Rutgers University, Dr. Virginia Cowen of the City University of New York, and Edwin Stern, founder of Ashtanga Yoga NY, participated in a discussion at Princeton University called “The Politics of Yoga.”• The event was recorded, and

videos were posted to YouTube. Topics included the definition of yoga, the commercialization of yoga, the validity of yoga as exercise alone, and whether yoga belonged to Hinduism or to any one tradition.

What is the overall analysis of the case?

• Yoga has been developed as a profitable business• Yoga entrepreneurs have

branded their own styles of practice• Yoga is arguably India’s

greatest cultural export, yoga has morphed into mass culture phenomenon.

• The yoga that is practiced today has very little in common with the yoga of Yoga sutra• The yoga classes that are

conducted today are unlike the one at the early ages, today the Yoga guru charge large sum of money from the students

• Yoga has its origin roots from India and entirety is rooted in the Hindu philosophy but is not being accepted by the west.

• Benefit of commercialization of yoga it its increased accessibility of yoga to the masses

Created by Smriti Mishra,G.E.C Rewa, during an internship by

Prof. Sameer Mathur,IIM Lucknow

www.IIMinternship.com