Story of An Ad Adict

Society from my eyes

It is not a typical story. It does not start with a spring morning or a rainy night. But love? Yes there is love and also there are colors. For me, these are the two things no one can live without. I cannot imagine a life without colors. Even the saddest person of the world can be associated with a grayish shade. What I think is, everyone around this world, every person, every animal and even every tree, has this urge of making themselves visible. Visible enough to make them feel good about it! Well some succeeds in doing so, while others fail. But the bottom-line is that we unanimously feel this urge. In fact this urge is driving me to write this book. This is what I call advertising for self. Self-promotion is just another name for building a brand. This is what life is all about. It is about building a brand value for ourselves and everything else we feel associated with. You see, advertising and branding are not new concepts. Or for that matter they surely cannot be just be regarded as a component of the marketing mix. What is marketing anyhow? Is it a department in a business? Is it a practice? Can it be considered as a career option? To me, marketing is just life as we see it. From our school days, we strive to get an identity, a brand identity as I would say. Showing people, how good or bad we are at something or everything for that matter. Defining and branding ourselves as cool football players or nerd mathematicians. These social definitions helped us to develop our own selves, in a way the society will accept us. Branding is an ancient exercise. Even the Pharaohs of Egypt tried to brand themselves through the exclusive monuments they have left behind. It gave them a separate identity. The practices and the rituals of every culture and region are dependent on the way and manner they want to be brand. Then there comes the concept of advertisements. We all do advertise. Don’t we? Starting from facial expressions to the gestures and body languages, ad promotions are all there. This is what makes me an addict.

 

 

I am addicted to the way in which all the social elements around me, try and display their own colors. I on the other hand, am just an observer. That is the brand identity I want to tag myself with. With time, businesses have evolved and the language of branding communication has become much more complex. The emergence of social media sites have definitely added to this cause. The trend is such that everyone is now uploading pictures and videos and updating status on their Facebook and Twitter accounts and making themselves as much visible as possible. This desire is not new, but rather it started when we were born. Remember the fist cry? Probably Not! But the statement underneath the cry was “I am here! I am here to stay.” Thus in that way, the inter-related processes of branding and marketing are in fact a part of our lives. But if we strictly talk about product-based branding activities, they are also all around us and very much visible starting from our early morning breakfast till the time we hit the bed. This book of mine is just a random collection of stories. As I said earlier, they are not typical stories. But these stories are of brands. To me ads tell stories; stories of brands. Stories about how companies have tried to make themselves visible to us.