To Be or Not to Be!

We are often dissatisfied with what we are! This is the premise that runs the world. The day we are satisfied, we are complacent and that means we are sleeping on a bed of sand. You wouldnt know when it got brushed off, and you are already on the ground.

We always move from one level of satisfaction of self to the other, never reaching it 100%. In a session on Branding, my prof made a valid point. There are always two levels in life - 'How good we are' and 'how good we want to be' and there is always a gap between them, for that is what propels life. It is this gap that we wish to hide from the external world and this is where brands play an efficient role. You are not as arrogant, but you want to be. So, what do you do? You probably wear a tee that has a nasty slogan or ride a bike that has been remodelled to show that you are mean. There are many such activities for each emotion and action!

But to me, the biggest wonder is whether education also falls into that category? If Brands are products that have etched in your mind, Is Education a Brand, given that it is a product? If it is a brand, it should only help you perceive yourself better than what you are, helping you portray the image that you always wanted to, but education isnt that. It is true value-add. So where does the line lie? Where does one know if he has really transcended his original self and has moved a step towards being what he wanted to be? and if there is something that has helped him move towards what he wanted to be, is it still a product or is it an integral part of him? Should products not be integrated into being?

YOU

Mirror, Mirror, Mirror on the wall... What is the greatest brand of all?

YOU, your honor!

That is the eternal truth of the world. If one had to sum up the existence of man kind in one word, that would be branding. It is a naked truth that we all survive on branding, our own individual branding. We want to be associated as something or someone in other's minds. When it comes to perceptions, we seldom ask ourselves what we are, we generally ask what others think of us! We try to portray ourselves to others to make a statement. We brand ourselves. We brand ourselves as go-getters, arrogant, jubilant, insane or whatever! And who makes the megabucks in this frenzy? Its the brands, the real ones this time! Everybody who wants to be branded as a dynamic person like Amitabh, wants to flaunt Reid and Taylor. Everyone who wants to look cool flaunts a MotoRazr or MotoRockr. Of course, no if is if and no but is but until Hypothesis Testing has been done and the Null Hypothesis rejected. But then, the very fact that there is gut and gumption to propose the hypothesis means this holds some value.

If we ever thought Branding self is a radical, new concept, we are wrong. It dates back to decades and as much as I could dig out, there has been solid evidence exactly 10 years back when Fast Company magazine made a mention of Brand You in one of its 1997 editions. The magazine spoke of realising what you are, and planning your career envisaging yourself as a brand as far as in 1997.

In fact, everything we do is for branding. Blogging is a sort of branding exercise. We could blog about everything that happens in our lives. Irky neighbors, pesky teachers, gorgeous women we see, filthy roads we tread on and many many more. But we do not. We consciously choose what we blog on when we want to brand ourselves.

Why do we brand ourselves like this?

The basic crux of a product is as follows:



The true you that you are is the CORE, but it gets embroiled in how you present yourselves, and further gets a face-lift through what others perceive of you. Without even your conscious effort, you start branding yourself.

And then, why not brand?! It is important to let people know what you are, and in the world where customer is the king, you should truly play to the galleries. If an employer wants a certain kind of candidate, ofcourse you should brand yourself as an enterprising candidate for the same!

So, what is Brand You?! Look into yourselves and see what you as a real brand are, and market it well! Life is all about Marketing!

Products and Habits

Today in the hour of Project Management, an illustrious and knowledgeable professor whom I admire a lot, mentioned about the analogy between brands and us. A simple thing like wearing shirt has so many connotations. It is a symbol of what you want others to feel about you.

While talking of how consumer behavior is closely knitted with what you perceive and what you want others to perceive of yourselves, the discussion landed up on whether products make habits or habits make products. It is something worth pondering upon. The professor just made the statement and left it at that.

In hindsight, I realise it is a profound observation of the society. For example, we never had an urge to sit on sofas and converse over coffee for long hours in an expensive setting until Barista and Cafe Coffee Day beckoned. We had a habit of having coffee, and these products stormed the market and groomed our habits in a certain way. The same is the situation with Big Bazaar, which as Kishore Biyani mentions in his autobiographical 'It Happened In India' is a gap-filler between the rich and poor customers of the country. Earlier the B and C consumer class of the country always bought goods from mom-and-pop stores and never dared to enter the so-called fancy departmental stores. They feared high rates and sophisticated products. With the advent of Big Bazaar, lower strata of society today thinks departmental, and thats because of the cost-competitiveness that product called Big Bazaar brought into the market.

Talking in such a tone, one tends to conclude that every innovation is in fact a habit-maker. As it is, the common strata of the society will never have aspirations to change things. An average Indian is busy with his work, family and other things. He always tends to get his work done with things available rather than look for making or ordering things that can do work his way. Hence, his habits are infact a slave to his choice of products.

Are we so fickle and product-oriented that we cannot stand stern on our habits? I really cant imagine what all those stranded in traffic bikers of Bangalore did earlier when there were no i-pods. I cannot imagine having a cup of coffee, however heavenly it is, at Saravana Bhavan while chatting with friends for at least 4-5 hours without any interruption. The waiter there could get physical if you tried that. The point is that with offer of new products, we groomed new habits. This means the personality of individuals and a society is broadly defined by the products the society produces and uses. Harley Davidson produced mean machines and made the western youth freaky bikers, while Hero Honda made 100CC and made the Indian youth ready for marriage! :P

Whatever the fact, it seems to me that our habits are the shadows that emanate out of the light that the product emanates! So, when we define our character or personality, what do we look for?! The shadow or the light that causes it? Are we so inconsequential that an enigmatic thing whose existence is always a debate, which is caused by some external object defines us while we dwell in the paradox that we created both, yet they command us!