By Kiran Khalap, April 4, 2010

This evening, Ambika Soni, Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Union Cabinet, India, was being interviewed on TV.

She admitted that she was not in favour of censorship of TV programmes, but that TV content producers needed to exercise restraint since most homes in India were single TV homes. Which means the entire family could watch one programme at a time: selective viewing, say, a sports channel by the adolescent son and a soap opera by the mom, was not a possibility.

To me, this was deja vu with a small twist in the size! Because it reminded me of the state of Indian cinema till a decade ago: because single screen theatres were entertainment destinations for the entire family, pan-Indian cinema stuck to a formula. The formula included stories that catered to a safe, traditional sense of morality, sprinkled liberally with slapstick comedy moments and exotic, not-within-reach locations.

Today, the multiplex theatres have given birth to a totally different kind of cinema: one that can connect to smaller focussed audiences (by experimenting with ‘risky’ themes and bolder execution styles) or can continue to serve the ’safer’ larger audiences. Look at Love Sex aur Dhoka at one end and Three Idiots at the other.

Does that mean Indian TV content is fated to wallow in the lachrymose waters of antediluvian themes…until a majority of homes start owning ‘multiple TV screens’?

Or will TV content break its shackles by becoming easily available on another screen that is totally individualised…a screen called the mobile phone (500 million and counting!)?

What do you think?

by Anand Halve

The new age overwhelms us with numbers. And Nandan Nilekani is soon going to give each of us a unique one that we can call our own! Numbers crowd our life.
Consider a businessperson: he is expected to know ROCE, EPS, EBITDA, and other numbers that encapsulate the health of his business.
A business journalist has to be au fait with stockmarket indices, the WPI, changes in GDP and so on.

Mr Average Kumar keeps track of his Net worth, his CTC, his credit card limit, etc.
Even the nymphet concerned with her nymphaliciousness has to keep track of calories consumed, weight, Body Mass Index, and how close she is to the magical ‘size zero.’
This fascination with the quantified view of civilisation, is not surprisingly, a recurring motif in advertising and media too.

And yet, I am amazed at the number of people who flaunt their number-numbness as a badge, drawing a spurious association between quantitative illiteracy (innumeracy) and creativity (“I’m an art person you know, I just can’t understand numbers” is supposed to convey that being numerically challenged is automatic proof of genius in the artistic field!)

I suspect it is this proud innumeracy that allows the widespread misuse and abuse of numbers and statistics.
The most common culprit is probably the “misleading multiplier.” Shampoos that make your hair “two times stronger”, products that are “50% more effective” and so on. No one asks: ‘compared to what?’

The answer if you look hard and have a microscope handy, is available in a caveat at the bottom of the TV screen.

The arithmetic though, gets positively mind-boggling when the numbers move from ‘more’ to ‘less’. As in hair-fall preventive products that leave “five times less hair” on the comb. What is “five times less”?! If there were 10 hair on the comb earlier, and now there are only 2, is that “five times less”? (10 divided by 2). That would be 80% less … on the other hand “five times” equals 500% … one is left scratching one’s head (no doubt causing “three times” more hair fall!)

Journalists lost for words
Less excusable are journalists who report survey findings, blissfully unaware that surveys are based on a sample. And that critical to interpreting the findings of a survey is the definition of the sample.
Recent newspaper articles cheerfully celebrated the extent to which the internet has penetrated the circulatory system of 12-18 year old school children, as shown in a survey about internet usage, conducted by a technology company. However the articles left me with more questions than answers.
- Were the students in the survey representative of ALL school students? From which schools were they picked?
- Were these students those who had computers at home? With 24-hour internet access at home?
- Did the other aspects of their profile match those of the total student community? (Eg their parents’ income, education and profession?)
I wrote to the journalists seeking clarifications. I haven’t heard from them.

Time lapse and other lapses
Another example: The recency effect in advertising posits that more recent exposure is recalled better. But surely, temporal amnesia is dangerous in understanding business?
Here are Interbrand’s valuations in billion USD, of three of the ‘World’s most valuable brands’ in 2008 (changes from 2007 year in brackets)

Coke: 2008 value: 66.7 ( plus 2%)

IBM: 2008 value: 59.0 (plus 3%)

GE: 2008 value: 53.1 (plus 3%)

They apear to have done about equally well. However, see how your inference about these brands would change if we compared the 2008 numbers with the 2003 numbers, rather than only for 2007.

Coke: minus 5.3%; IBM: plus 14%; GE: plus 26%

Not quite so equal are they? And surely understanding business requires a better perspective than one’s view of films, where you forget last year’s hits in favour of last week’s releases?

But unless people begin to believe that it is important to understand numbers, what they reveal - and equally, their limitations - they will continue to be taken in by “false numerology.” And one-third of the world will continue to have no idea about what the other 56% think!

by Anand Halve

Americans are delightfully simple. For instance, if they are convinced about a concept or a line of thinking, they’ll say, “I’ll buy that!”
The language of commerce - a willingness to pay - being the definitive proof of acceptance!
However, for some time now, marketers have been in denial about this fundamental axiom.
“Give it away free” has been a popular business model backed VC, PE and other acronymous sources, staring at teenaged geeks bursting with pimples and ideas.
The notion being that someone else (read advertisers) would pay for a product being consumed by others.

The media (print, TV, social, antisocial, whatever), succeeded for several decades. But in the process, they have created a monster.
A consumer who – like a farmer buying fertilizer – now expects purchases to be subsidized. This ‘freeloading’ attitude is why people get their knickers in a knot when asked to pay more, whether it is to watch the antics of pre-pubescent brides or post-pubescent cricketers.
The expectation from subsidies however, grows rapidly. Once fertilizer is subsidized, one expects the seeds to be subsidized. And power charges… and diesel… you get it.
“The price I pay is my acknowledgement of value”
‘Price’ should be the agreement on value between buyer and seller, but consumers now expect some ‘invisible benefactor’ to pick up some or all of the tab.
Consider email. What’s the worth of the email or chat service you say you love?
Rs. 15 / day? (one bottle of drinking water?)
Rs. 20 / week? (one McDonald’s Happy Menu meal?)
Rs. 300 /month? (one home delivered pizza?)
I’ve asked dozens of people and almost no one is ready to pay anything at all for web-based services. They’d rather switch to another free service.

How many unpaid Limewire downloads do you have on your computer?
Do we ever wonder who pays when we take off into the skype, so to say?
Would you limit the number of results delivered if you were charged ‘per result’ for search?

Undifferentiation via borrowed glory
However, the potentially fatal threat to branding is the number of marketers who seem to accept that ‘price’ itself is a gaseous notion, uncoupled from perceptions of value delivered.
Because it’s not just consumers who are freeloaders. So too are marketers.
PC manufacturers allowed themselves to become undifferentiated when they cheerfully backed Windows and gleefully embraced ‘Intel Inside’, as Intel picked up part of the advertising tab.
Result? Most PCs became little more than boxes with ‘Wintel’ inside.
Non-stick cookware brands buried their differences under ‘Teflon’, when most brands started making Teflon (a Du Pont property) their main claim to fame.

Commodities pretending to be brands?
Supposedly, one of the key metrics of brand equity is, “the premium a brand commands”
So how come Coca Cola, long revered by Interbrand, if not Indian consumers, can’t command any price premium over its competitors?
Conversely, one of the most critical pieces of evidence that Harley-Davidson is a great brand, is the fact that people are willing to pay a lot more for it than for a ‘commonplace motorcycle’.
Likewise, your conviction that the Gucci name has great cachet shows when you pay hundreds of times more for it than for a handbag on Linking Road.

A product that only sells at a price identical to that of its substitute products used to be called a ‘commodity’.
But maybe I’m just old fashioned.
“Me-too… but I have a bigger advertising budget”
It gets worse.
Does the world really need dozens ‘ayurvedic shampoos’? Or readymade shirts? Or whatever.
But marketers of even completely me-too products seem to feel that with a celebrity any brand can differentiated. So every Sunny Deol flexing his equipment in a Lux Cozi banian, competes with a Sunjay Dutt parading his pectorals in a Rupa banian!

Similarly, while the already-almost-forgotten Olympic boxer puts on his gloves for one insurance company, Tendulkar bats another.
Do people really follow sport stars into a bank? Do you?
And how many of us rushed out to get a BSNL connection after watching Deepika Padukone’s bizarre imitation of a classical dancer on a Kerala house-boat?

Aah, but marketers seem to buy the story.

- Kiran Khalap, November 24, 2009

Inspiring brands (Eg: Harley Davidson) vs insipid brands (Eg: General Motors). Brands that create a new horizon in their category ( Eg: Body Shop) vs brands that trudge along a rut (Eg:Pierre Cardin). Brands that make a difference vs brands we are indifferent to.

For ten years, we, brand theoreticians and brand practitioners at chlorophyll, have struggled to find why some brands morph into icons of inspiration while some stay as plain as envelopes. Is it product design, smart marketing, the right market opportunity, clear branding principles, weak competitors…? Are some brands destined for greatness or is greatness thrust upon them?

We have discovered the answer: the brand owner’s intention.

Yes, it’s as simple as that.

Because as Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

There will always be some people who will buy the brand, however wannabe, confused and schizophrenic it may be, and hence, business will continue as usual. The brand owner’s intention, in most such cases, is to make money…the more the better.

General Motors spent $1,037.1 million in advertising in 2008, fooling “some of the people” into believing it makes passable cars. How much does Harley Davidson spend on advertising? I don’t know about 2008, but usually they spend $ Zero.

Harley’s intention is also to make money, but its profits would be a by-product of making a great product.

One of the most inspiring business leaders in India, Anu Aga, explained this relationship lyrically: “Growth and profits are to business what breathing is to living. Living is impossible without breathing, but the objective of life is not breathing per se.”

Does your brand has a higher aim in life? Does it want to ‘make a dent in the universe’ as Steve Jobs wanted to? Does it have an inspiring intention?

If the answer is no, don’t worry. Your brand may not keel over and die. It will merely roast in the hell of mediocrity.

by Kiran Khalap

MJ is no more, long live brand MJ.

Even before the Tweets had quietened, there were blogs about MJ’s childhood, his Moonwalk, his music and his life, and the brand he chose to live.

There! While you were not looking, I slipped in that weasel word, “ brand” just to check if you recoiled with surprise;-)!

Call me old-fashioned, but just how does a human being become a brand?

Apparently, there is a thriving business around a concept called Personal Branding.

Is this just one more way of adding zing to a jaded word thus drawing attention to (and creating revenue for) the author? Or is there something valuable in this idea?

As I start digging into the history of that word, I discover conflicting data.

Dan Schwabel, the resident guru on the subject, describes Personal Branding as “how we market ourselves to others.” Then, he pulls back a bit later and explains that it is not really marketing as we understand it. He explains the difference between image management and personal branding thus: “Image management is how to shape perceptions by changing who you are on the outside. In this way, you are deceiving, while pleasing others. Personal Branding is how we market ourselves to others by revealing who we are on the inside. In today’s world, tricking people doesn’t work in the long-term.”

The Chartered Institute of Marketing, apparently the world’s largest organisation for marketing professionals (also one with one of the most forgettable logos in the business; they lose marks in self-referentiality, don’t you agree?) defines marketing as, “The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.”

Inherently, marketing is about fulfilling someone else’s requirements…so how the hell can you market yourself if you are true to what you are on the inside?

In fact, this definition of Personal Branding exposes the lingering divide between the old-fashioned definition of a brand and the emerging truth about brands in the 21st century.

The old-fashioned view of a brand is about ‘positioning’ and ‘making it competitive’ vis-a-vis others, while the emerging truth about a brand is very simple: it is based on an idea that stays true to itself.

Half-truths cause more harm to brands: it’s like Ferrari CEO asserting in the Paris Motor Show that his cars produce fewer emissions than Priuses. Which is true on an absolute scale (emission from total number of Ferraris compared to total number of Priuses), but a lie on a per-car comparison.

Whether you are a looking at a brand in a business sphere or a human being in a personal sphere, both need just two simple words to be themselves, “Be honest.”

I believe those two words end the contradiction far better than the twin commandments of “market yourself to others” and “market yourself by revealing who you are from the inside.”

Unlike Schwabel, here’s someone who doesn’t misuse the word brand.  He seems to have internalised a far simpler meaning of a Personal Brand…and its relationship to a corporate brand. His name is Daniel Vasella.  As Chairman & CEO, Novartis, here’s what he said:

“I truly believe that my ability to keep shareholder faith in our company depends in the end not on whether I make the quarter but on who I am, what my guiding principles in life are, and my behaviour.  What counts is who you are personally.”

Moral of the story? MJ made music like no other, and the music may be a brand of music, but MJ was no brand. MJ was a human being like any of us.

Of course, if you don’t buy the argument, feel free…to be yourself.  And write to me.

by Anand Halve

Messer’s Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co, have a lot to answer for. Their leveraged buyouts in the 1980s created a long-lasting interest in the enormous value of ‘brands’. But even they could not have imagined just how much this business of brands would infiltrate the life of people in the years to come. It’s turned so bad now that not only is everything you use - from toes to topknot - a brand, everyone too is a brand! The word, like a malevolent air-borne virus, is everywhere. It permeates all conversation and all walks of life.

So it is not uncommon to hear of a certain cricketer’s ‘brand’ of cricket or a TV producer’s ‘brand’ of TV soaps (the TV shows produced by the reigning Queen of soaps having taken over the mantle of lather from Lux as the ‘Beauty soaps of the stars’).

The B-word is now also widely used by giggly, breathless girl-reporters, as they report from fashion shows and gasp at the unwearable offerings of ‘brands’ of gelled, pedicured and manicured designers. Serious-faced reporters on business TV channels use it as they discuss a businessman’s ‘brand’ of management. And of course the entertainment pages are full of interviews where effete directors talk about their ‘brand’ of films.

You got it: today, everyone is a brand. So perhaps it is time to consider the typology and myriad dimensions of this phenomenon.

Acquiring brand-hood

The first thing to remember is that while everyone is a brand, some are born brands, some acquire brand-hood and others have branding thrust upon them.

Abhishek Bachchan clearly is a case of a born brand; given his genetic configuration, it could not have been otherwise. So too are sundry other star-progeny. And the progenitors could be actors, businessmen, politicians; essentially anyone who himself/herself has a claim to being a brand. Baby Suri, manufactured by Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes is even more so: she was a brand before she was even born! She could be the first case in recorded history to be what one could call a ‘branded foetus’.

Others acquire brand-hood. Dhoni acquired ‘branded’ status with his swashbuckling style. So did Sehwag. Both acquired it fairly soon after they were launched, so to say. Dravid took longer. He had to lay the foundation for a long time, before he could become the brand we know as ‘The Wall’.

And then of course there are the ones who have branding thrust upon them. Perhaps I should say that co-branding is thrust upon them. M. Night Shymalan has no particular desire to be co-branded with India, but journalists will insist on finding some way of describing him so that he becomes a co-branded entity: ‘Of Indian origin’ or ‘India-born’ are common mechanisms employed to do this. Others want to do the same to Bobby Jindal, though what he wants is to be co-branded ‘American’ in the ‘Senator’ product category. We want to do it to VS Naipaul too, even though in his case, the tenuous link for such co-branding became defunct several generations ago.

Me-too brands

If it happens in business, it will happen in life. A new ‘product category’ came into being with the invention of the term, ‘item song’. Barely (pun intended) had Shefali Jariwala and Meghna Naidu gyrated and bit their lips in music videos to achieve brand-hood, that an entire shipment of me-too brands arrived; the same pudgy midriff, the same lascivious look, the same absence of any sign of intelligence disturbing their expression.

Rakhi Sawant is only a more recent specimen of the me-too brands of exposed adipose tissue. In an earlier era these buxom brands were also associated with specific product categories such as textiles. Who can forget the entire batch of fabric softeners represented by Silk Smitha, Nylex Nalini and others? But the trend died out, before others like Rexine Rekha and Kevlar Kavitha could make their mark.

Relevant and irrelevant taglines

If Nike has ‘Just do it’ and Asian Paints has ‘Har ghar kuchh kehta hai’, person-brands too, want or are given different taglines and ‘product descriptors’.

And there are some people brands whose taglines are as memorable as these examples. On the other hand, ‘sexy new starlet’ or ‘volcano of talent’ are completely ineffective in clearly identifying a specific person.

Here then, is today’s quiz on People-Brand lines and descriptors:

Q1: Who is known as ‘India’s liquor baron’?
Q2: Which actor was called the ‘Thespian’?
Q3: Who is called ‘The world’s richest man’?
Q4: Who is called the ‘Sarod Maestro’?

If you got Vijay Mallya, Dilip Kumar, Bill Gates and Amjad Ali Khan right, it just goes to show that these brands have come to own certain specific properties or descriptors.

But not everyone can have such exclusive right to entire product categories.

Nevertheless there are other ways to gain differentiation. So while Sunil Gavaskar was ‘The Little Master’, Sachin Tendulkar became the ‘Master Blaster’.

However, these epithets get used equally often in valid and invalid situations. For example, it may be appropriate to say that, “Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar scored a quick-fire 45 off just 23 balls,” but it is a bit much to caption a picture from his birthday celebrations with the words, “Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar about to cut his birthday cake,” suggesting that he is shortly going to bludgeon the baked item with his weighty willow.

This irrelevant use of a descriptor has broken new ground in the case of a certain tennis player. It is not uncommon to read that, “The Hyderabadi lass fought well in the second set.” What does her play have to do with where she is from? Do we want reports saying, “And the Ichalkaranji boy announced that he would be launching a new banking software package”? Or that “The 24-Parganas danseuse performed the Mohiniattam with grace”?

Of course mere irrelevance pales in comparison to the positively bizarre, as in “The teen sensation was thrashed 2-6, 3-6 in the first round of the…”

Borrowed branding

And then there is ‘borrowed-branding’. This was invented to make memorable, perfectly forgettable ladies in their launch stage in films. Kiera Knightly was an unknown and had to be propped up as the ‘Bend it like Beckham beauty’. After she got a role in a more successful film she became, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean beauty’. And you have ‘Lara Croft beauty Angelina Jolie’ and ‘Spiderman beauty Kirsten Dunst’ and so on. You will note that the word ‘beauty’ is used quite liberally and indiscriminately.

But there are times when even reporters know it would be going too far to call someone a beauty; and so the words ‘hotel heiress’ are employed as a substitute, to provide some borrowed branding to a vacuous bimbo, although her name itself borrows from geography and the hospitality industry.

The most extreme cases of borrowed - or what might be called ‘attributed’ - branding are to be found in Page 3 coverage. Consider for example the number of people who are branded ‘Socialite’. The term is used as if it represents a philosophic orientation, like ‘Luddite’ or ‘Trotskyite’; or a species of animal life like ‘Troglodyte’. In fact, one suspects it only means, “We know this person is rich, but we really don’t know if the person actually does anything other than attend parties.”

And thus it is in the fitness of things that the term ‘poster boy’ has come to be employed as a part of the strategy to launch various citizens as brands. And if some of the posters look a bit frayed fairly quickly, well, you know what they say about the short life cycle of brands in the 21st century.

by Kiran Khalap

Horn OK Please

Ever since globalization began, marketers have swung from one extreme to another while dealing with the localization vs globalization of marketing communication.

The answer is always the same: the more culturally relevant the marketing communication is, the more efficient it will be. That is in keeping with our own experience: I have heard of and seen most of the characters that feature in the new viral G for Gatorade that is being talked about in the US right now, but because I am an Indian those men and women (whether Serena Williams or Muhammad Ali) carry no emotional cache. There are no lump-in-the-throat moment, no giggles. Similarly, the advertising professional in the US may have heard of Amir Khan, but s/he is unlikely to grin from ear to ear as I did when I watched him as a safari-suit-clad ambassador in the Panch TVC for Coke. “Tumhaare baap kitne the?” Wow!

So the answer is always clear (“the more culturally relevant the marketing communication is, the more efficient it will be”), the question is never. “What is culture?”

One of the shortest, the most meaningful and my favourite answer was provided by Dr Sudhir Kakkar, a renowned Indian sociologist and psychoanalyst: “Culture is shared meaning.”

Since 1995, I have been making presentations to fellow Indians and marketers about India’s oral culture and how it affects everyday life, product development as well as marketing communications even today!
First, a quick note on India’s oral culture. For those who appeared fairly recently on earth, the Indian culture is meant to be at least 5000 years old. And the one noteworthy aspect of this culture is that most of its architecture, dance, music, mathematics, even medicine has been transmitted orally for several thousand years.

The Indian musicians perform without musical sheets: they have committed to memory the ascending and descending notes that define every structure called a raga. Indian maths rarely went wrong because it was transmitted in rhymed Sanskrit, a language whose meaning is independent of syntax!

Most of the truths of Ayurveda, the science of health, were also transmitted through rhymed sentences. My mother had been schooled only until Class 3 in a village, but she calculated things faster than I ever could but she had been made to memorise arithmetic tables of not just 2X2, but 1/4×1/4, 3/4×3/4!

So far so good! Does this culture express itself in today’s life, in the 21st century or is it just a fancy notion about a romanticized past?

Consider this: one of India’s most successful TV shows is actually a radio show. It is called Antakshari. It involves singing songs that match the last sound of the competitor’s song. “Now that’s a face for radio” was a phrase invented just for these participants (late night, allowing myself some nastiness;-)!)

Consider this: every single global brand of car marketed in India needed to have its horn re-calibrated. The louder the horn, the bigger the car!

Consider this: every single global television brand marketed in India needed to have its sound recalibrated. If the neighbour can’t hear my TV, why have one?

Consider this: On the Indian highway, unless the car in front of you hears you, it will dismiss your car’s image in its rearview mirror as an illusion. That is why, India has the largest collection of trucks that say “Horn OK Please” Well Ok, the OK used to be once upon a time a light that would blink at night to signal to the overtaker that the overtakee had allowed him to overtake on the dark highways of India. But the Horn was essential to certify that the overtaker was real;-)!

Consider this: Most Indians will send a mail or an SMS, and then call you to say they have done so!

Consider this: Every single marketing and advertising ‘slogan’ in India is rhymed. (Except those in English, of course.)

Consider this: All ad agencies in India have writers who write in English and writers who write in other Indian languages. As a Creative Director in advertising for 20 years, I have always had the English writer coming to me and handing over a sheet of paper saying, “KK, what do you think of this?”
I have always had the language writer coming and saying, “KK, listen to this.” Without exception!

Once, I asked my wife, who is a specialist on the INDog, the primitive dingo pariah dog-type, why our pet dogs do not react to the images of cats or birds or other dogs on TV, and she said, “Because they can’t smell them.” Their primary organ is the nose! They might hear them mewing and barking and chirping and get excited but if their noses don’t confirm the data, it is not useful data!

For us Indians, the ear is the primary organ, the eye is not. When Coke came to India first, they ran a TVC that celebrated the colour red. Whoa! The brand name was never uttered! The consumer did not know whether to ask for coke or coca or coca cola! Worse, 60% of the TV sets were B&W! Worse, Coke was distributed not through retail outlets where row upon row of merchandise was displayed but through mom-and-pop shops where you had to go and ask for it.

Lesson One: Therefore “Brand Recall” (ears, therefore how to say the brand name!) was more important than “Brand Recognition” (eyes, therefore how to spot the colour red as opposed to the Pepsi blue).

My most memorable anecdote about branding building and the oral culture in India (I have several, write to me if you need more!) was when I was doing marketing communication for a detergent soap (remember in India, powders, liquids and bars co-exist!) named, hold your collective breaths, 501!
The number 501.

So we decided that on the pack and in other visual media (outdoor, print) we would restrict branding to the English script (the brand name would be written as 501)…but what about media where sound played a part?
Radio and TV? (The internet was not even born before 1988!)
We had to, believe it or not, translate the brand name in the local language!

So on Marathi TV channels the brand name became, “Paach she ek”, In Tamil it became, “Aainati unna…” in Bengali it became, “Paanch sho ak…”

Heard of any other nation where the same brand name is pronounced in twelve different ways?
Naah…so stay tuned;-) for more interesting notes (from an old and ever-delighted observer) on brand building in India and elsewhere!

by Madan Bahal

 I was having a look at the search patterns from India for the last 30 days on Google Trends. 

Amongst the top searches, ’songs’ took the first place with a score of 100 followed by Google at 75. Games and Yahoo at 65 each. Videos at 65 and IPL at 60.   

In the rising searches analysis (search subjects that registered the highest growth last month) ‘ipl20′ led the tally with a score of +4900%. The second and third positions were also occupied by keywords around Indian Premier League (IPL).  At the 4th and 5th position you find ‘PNR status’ and ‘Indian railways’. 

Someone not familiar with Indian culture will find ’songs’ at the first place somewhat intriguing. But those of you are familiar with the fact that the Indian culture is oral rather than visual will not be surprised. To those of you who dismiss the idea that Indian medicine, maths, philosophy, music, even architecture was transmitted orally for thousands of years as lost tradition, I’d say, think again: even today, we continue to be an oral culture. Every single imported brand of cars had to get its horn recalibrated and so was every single TV brand’s speaker (Trinitron was a failure till they realised this fact!), every single political slogan is a rhyme…

 Which brings me to the really intriguing fact…

 That in the rising search analysis the political parties or any politician or the Prime Ministerial aspirants did not figure in the top 10 rising search results. As mentioned earlier, the top result ‘ipl20’ had a score of +4900% growth while the 10^th result ‘Vodafone’ was at +40%.

 In a general elections month, with peak campaigning in the world’s largest democracy, the difference in the interest levels for cricket versus elections reflects the state of Indian society.

 Link to search results for the last one month:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#geo=IN&date=today%201-m&cmpt=geo

by Radio KK on March 11, 2009 

Tune in, brothers and sisters, and press the accelerator on your keyboards…for the idea of a brand itself is being questioned.

Can human beings become brands?

Almost everybody believes so. (I don’t!) Correction: Almost everybody says so!

Apparently, as early as 2005, Brad Pitt said in Washington Post “I am a brand.” Tom Peters wrote about ‘The brand called you’ in Fast Company in December 2007. Brenda Bence’s book “How you are like a shampoo” was an award winning finalist in 2008.

So what happened to the first principle we learnt about the difference between a human being and a brand: that a human being has a defined life span, but a brand does/need not?

James Bond is a brand, a spy, an idea created by Ian Fleming in 1952. He has remained 6 feet, 76 kilograms in weight and 37 years old since then. He is defined by an understated British wit, the je ne sais quoi that makes him irresistible to ladies, and the license to kill…but we do not mistake Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig for James Bond the idea do we?

And what happened to the principle that a great brand is an idea that outlasts the individual who thought of it in the first place? Eg: ‘Wholesomeness’ as an idea in entertainment thought of by Walt Disney continues to inspire a whole series of feature films that appeal to families around the world long after his death in 1966.

Non-violence and civil disobedience as a means of revolution against colonization is an idea that Gandhi promoted, but Gandhi himself was a human being. “Gandhigiri” is a brand, not MK Gandhi.

Methinks there is a whole load of lazy opportunistic thinking around the very idea of a brand. I think Tom Peters uses the word to suggest promoting oneself like a brand does: but the conclusion that therefore an individual is actually a brand is misleading! I haven’t read Ms Bence’s book, but I guess the theme is similar…

So: what do you think? Should we change the definition of a brand to include a temporal, changeable, human being? Or stick to the classical definition of the brand as a timeless idea?