Tuesday, October 09, 2007

More on Branding

When I read the above title in one go, it reads like "Moron Branding". That is not how I want it to sound, but my crippled vocabulary can't conjure up anything better. I truly believe in the power of brands, for the uninitiated my understanding of the word 'brand' is not limited to the label I sport or the ones those are brandished on the sidewalk. Brand to me is an *intangible psychological undercurrent* it just lives in people's mind. I am yet to meet someone who knows the 'whys' and the 'hows' of this equation.

When I was 13-14 months old in my career, I was meeting one of my very close friend after a long time. During the conversation my passion for brand brimmed over and I remarked "it is so important to be associated with a positive brand in all walks of life". Corollary of which is, your personal brand should always have a positive ring to it. Considering she was a student of MBA in Brand Management, I expected her to echo my thoughts but I should have known better. BOOM comes the retort "see Vinna, I know you are passionate about certain things but you got to explain". Ha ha.. vivid examples are my forte :

Example #1 : You walk into a store to buy a loaf of bread. On the shelf there is a nameless (read un-branded) loaf and then there is Britannia...which loaf will you pick up? Britannia is the answer.

I ran into a similar situation sometime ago where one of my colleague exhibited a nonchalant attitude towards the word "brand". Now, I had to come out with a really solid example because she has got a really thick skin (Kaziranga Rhino anyone?..).

Example #2 : Your parents are looking to get you married off to a nice guy. Parents always wish good things for their kids...right? After passing all the gruelling tests of their daughter's likes and dislikes, they have two potential matches for their lovely daughter. One works for Microsoft and the other works for 'Notsosoft' making lot of hard money. I asked her, "do you want to take a guess whom your parents would choose?"

Just four alphabets, that is all it takes! Rest assured I can give more extreme examples.

Blog number 50 UP! The regulars - Please leave a note and enlarge this wannabe writer's ego.

2 comments:

Archana Nagarajan said...

ha..mister...u already wrote 2 more blogs after this...way to go...but, really...i love ur blogs and wish that i would also be regular...
anyways, this is a nice one..i agree with u that somehow brands attract me...even, if i pay an outrageous sum for the product...still i take it!!!...

Thought Provoking said...

here is one to your ego!