Friday, August 13, 2004
Branding and me...
Can a particular product mean different things to different people ? If so, is it a good thing or bad? If its bad is it the fault of the positioning or the branding? I know i am supposed to know the answers since i am an MBA who has specialised in Marketing but it does get very difficult when the product is a person.. more specifically, myself. After all, one cannot be entirely objective when opining on oneselves :-)
Was reading this really interesting article today morning in Strategic Marketing, that supplement which comes with TOI, and chanced to see this wonderful quote.
"When you don't take efforts to brand yourself, the market brands you in ways you don't like"
So true. NORMAL IS BORING is a nice statement to make on a Tee shirt but ever tried to live with a tag of being "NORMAL" (to be read as: abnormal) Thats precisely what happened to me at SP - when i got in, i jes wanted to be the average inconscpicuous Joe mindful of my own business but then things always do not turn out the way you want them to.. I should have taken pains to deliberately project myself as "one amongst the lot" but since i took no such initiatives, i was wrongfully branded as "NORMAL" - So if i lost my temper on something valid, people still thought i was flying off at trivial things - if i yelped with joy at some simple pleasures, i was being kiddish - if i bunked class i was being too rebellious - and if i attended classes i was being a geek... You geting it nuh....The trick was that on Day One i should have shouted from rooftops that i was a geek and stuck to classes, books and libraries or confessed that i was a libertine and asked every damn gal for sex :-)) There is absolutely no middle path in this kinda stuff :-)
If i could go back in time and change one aspect of my last two years at SP, then it would be people's recollection of my brand image as "fun-loving, friendly, trusthworthy BUT safe" - C'mon , it isn't that i am a pure vegetarian - of course with quite a few women, we could have been more than just-good-friends :-))
Was reading this really interesting article today morning in Strategic Marketing, that supplement which comes with TOI, and chanced to see this wonderful quote.
"When you don't take efforts to brand yourself, the market brands you in ways you don't like"
So true. NORMAL IS BORING is a nice statement to make on a Tee shirt but ever tried to live with a tag of being "NORMAL" (to be read as: abnormal) Thats precisely what happened to me at SP - when i got in, i jes wanted to be the average inconscpicuous Joe mindful of my own business but then things always do not turn out the way you want them to.. I should have taken pains to deliberately project myself as "one amongst the lot" but since i took no such initiatives, i was wrongfully branded as "NORMAL" - So if i lost my temper on something valid, people still thought i was flying off at trivial things - if i yelped with joy at some simple pleasures, i was being kiddish - if i bunked class i was being too rebellious - and if i attended classes i was being a geek... You geting it nuh....The trick was that on Day One i should have shouted from rooftops that i was a geek and stuck to classes, books and libraries or confessed that i was a libertine and asked every damn gal for sex :-)) There is absolutely no middle path in this kinda stuff :-)
If i could go back in time and change one aspect of my last two years at SP, then it would be people's recollection of my brand image as "fun-loving, friendly, trusthworthy BUT safe" - C'mon , it isn't that i am a pure vegetarian - of course with quite a few women, we could have been more than just-good-friends :-))
