BRAND EQUITY

Like me, do you get the feeling that our world view is a mosaic of different brand filters? Let’s consider a scenario:

Anamika meets Rajiv for the first time on their first date. Rajiv takes her to a coffee shop mentioning how he loves the ambience there. As they sit down, Rajiv places his cell phone on the table. Anamika checks the time on her watch and fishes for her cell phone from her bag and calls up a friend. Meanwhile Rajiv is checking out the menu stretching out his legs with his boots on. He steals a glance at Anamika looking cute in her pink top and jeans. Wearing his faded jeans and his favourite black shirt, Rajiv feels pretty comfortable on his first date with her.

Anything out of the place? Maybe not at first glance. Take a look again.

Anamika meets Rajiv for the first time on their first date. Rajiv takes her to a Cafe Coffee Day coffee shop mentioning how he loves the ambience there. As they sit down, Rajiv places his cell phone on the table, a Nokia N92. Anamika checks the time on her Titan Raga watch and fishes for her cell phone, a Motorzr from her Gucci bag and calls up a friend. Meanwhile Rajiv is checking out the menu stretching out his legs with his Woodlands boots on. He steals a glance at Anamika looking cute in her MNG spaghetti top and Levi's jeans. Wearing his faded Red Tab jeans and his favourite black Diesel shirt, Rajiv feels pretty comfortable on his first date with her.

The point is this. Have you ever had the feeling you were trying to possess things you didn’t really need based on promises that are intangible at best? That someone else was creating wants you didn’t have before? Welcome to the surreptitious world of brand marketing. I am talking about brands that have made us want to possess things we didn’t need based on what they said those things will do to us. “Eat this and you will stay slim”, “wear that and you will be the hottest thing around”, “spray this and you will be irresistible”.

That is not to say all brands are ‘evil’. A brand is a promise. A promise of either physical, emotional or(and) psychological benefit(s). And there are many brands out there that have lived up to their promises. What I am talking about is those brands that have told us we cannot be what we want to be if we do not use their products/services. A brand that tells a girl she cannot be an air-hostess if she doesn’t use their fairness cream, a brand that tells boys they are losers till they start using that brand of deodorant…..you get the idea.

We are all beautiful people and we do not need some brand to tell us we are not good enough. We are free people. Free to make choices…free to question things. We are all free people and we are all curious as hell!!

Curiosity is one of the most basic instincts amongst us humans. We all have wondered where babies come from, if the face on the moon is indeed that of an old man and if the big bang was for real. Each of us continuously questions the status quo and why it needs to be that way. It’s an exciting journey, one on which WE choose our thoughts and our wants, not someone else.

theism = believing in Google!

A premise is what i'm looking for to start with...
hmmm...can't think beyond a 9 yr young baby(??) whom we fondly call Google...

Think what can 0 and 1 do to this noblest of races...POLARIZATION...and how many poles have we grown up studying about...north and south , positive and negative...is that it?

but the Google thingy has the internet community divided into 3!!!...

lemme explain:
First there is this group that believes that Google is gonna do what Alexander the great couldn't...the eternal ravers of Google i'm talking about.For them Microsoft and Yahoo are nothing more than the brave spartans of 300 who will lay down their lives fighting the Google juggernaut.You say "internet" by slip of tongue in a conversation with them and the next thing you know is you are almost into believing the apparent superiority of this company.Google is the second best and the most kickass thing to have happened for them...(first being the Computer itself).They're above mundane things like search and all that.They have a hypermetropic view of Google as the all pervasive phenomenon.Google is,very soon, going to rule the world...

For the second kind...Google is Smart but not God.Page Rank and all that is fine...but how long a shelf life does it have?...is their reason...Fair enough...(how abt Contextual search???).Believers in Darwin's theory as they are...they extrapolate that one day Larry Page, the junior, will come and better the senior and kick his butts on that.Orkut,Youtube et al are all for them proof that Google's business model is past its prime.They wouldn't deny that nobody has even come close to tasting the kind of success that Google has with its search engine...but they believe there still are things out there that can create much bigger businesses than Google’s in a shorter time span.Right now, for them, somebody has got a better rulebook and is working on improving upon Google's health...

Then there is the third kind...the indifferent but selfish kind.Whenever they need info about anything...whom do they ask?...Google.And what is that?.Its a piece of software that crawls the web and gets you information on demand.No loyalties et al for this kind.Google , Lycos , Altavista ...they're all the same for this kind.Chandramukhi or Paro...whats the big deal...as long your job is done!!.They are least interested in Google...its only the search that matters..."mallika's pics or great deals on ipod".And thanks to the information explosion, if Google doesn't satisfy them...they do wag their tongue more than a bit!...poor G.

which kind am I???