At one point in my life, I felt like my everyday livelihood was so dependent upon and inundated by brand marketing concepts that I wished to escape from them all. So, what do I do?? I conceive the birth of my brand called "UnBrand" back in late 90's. Our purchasing patterns became so dominated by brand equity, brand identity, brand reputation, and brand knowledge (wait, how many "brand concepts" do we have?) that we were literally paying so much EXTRA price for the PERCEIVED VALUE of these brands...
Can we all afford some of these over-priced branded goods? (How ironic this is coming from someone who spent his entire professional life on creating brand equity...). I've seen people commit crimes to buy THE brands they wanted...Look no further than the parking lot scenes at the famed Woodbury Premium Outlet Shops in Woodbury, NY and they ship shoppers in chartered buses every hour from all over the upstate NY and the neighboring cities. It's a testament to how we've become inseparably attached to BRANDS and how marketers have successfully made the branding into an art form over the years.
My "solution" at the time was to EMANCIPATE us from these "brand handcuffs"...but how??
Why don't I create patches or (crazy-glued) stickers (of all sizes) that just has the word "Un" (as in
"UnBrand") and sell these stickers or patches as my primary product. The message behind my "UnBrand"? - A mutiny by the little people against these top-echelon, over-priced brands. All we'll ever need is this "UnBrand" patch and it will free us (or "UnBrand" us) from our impossible-to-afford, hardly necessary consumption of branded products. Hey, this was a product-category buster!!! I didn't have to sell a single t-shirt but ALL THE EXISTING PRODUCTS IN THE WORLD could potentially belong to my "UnBrand" brand.!! I can go after mass audience with this concept, connect with them, and make some money, right??
All my friends and colleagues had thought it was a brilliant idea. Of course, they were mostly brand marketing people. Why didn't I pursue it more aggressively?? Well, I ran into an ethical dilemma...
While I knew I had to evangelize average consumers and "sell" the unbrand-yourself theme, I knew deep inside that all I was back at doing was to create yet another BRAND and eventually CAGE my consumers again with the same old brand management strategies and tactics...
Who knows what would have happen had I ran with it? The biggest proponent of the UnBrand concept was my older brother. To this day one of his email address is "unbrand@_______.com" and he's registered the domain name www.unbrand.com under our both names which we still own. Interestingly, over the years, we've been inquired several times about the possibility of selling this domain name, so I guess the vision was not restricted to a couple of brothers... :-)
Long story short... this week's marketing class will be on BRANDS and I am very excited about it...
For those of you who are genuinely interested in this topic or a career in this area, here are some good links that you want to bookmark and visit occasionally...
BRANDWEEk Link
Also, here's a link to Business Week's BEST GLOBAL BRANDS page...
CLICK FOR THE BEST GLOBAL BRANDS (Business Week also has a decent Brand Equity Section).
Notice that most of these winners are consistently top vote-getters
for the MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES in the world category as well.
What is the link?? How about "consumer or brand EXPERIENCE" for an answer??
Remember the first exercise in our marketing class?? "What is the brand that you are now??"
Hopefully, by the end of this week, you'll have better understanding of
and more appreciation for all our BRAND stories...
Have a good week...
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