michael-jackson Archives - Journey called life!

India has always been a cricket crazy nation and probably will remain so for the next few generations as well. No, I don’t say this because I love cricket or that I am an Indian but because Indians showed their love for cricket to the entire world yesterday. And the best part is that they proved their prowess at a time not when India had won but when they had LOST a closely fought ODI (One Day International) match against world champions Australia.

Chasing a mighty 350 runs target in 50 overs, Sachin Tendulkar, arguably the world’s best ever batsmen and undoubtedly the best currently playing batsmen, played an innings of a life time and scored half of those runs alone (175 runs) but couldn’t take India to victory as the entire team fell 3 runs short of the target! Each and every Indian who saw the match was heartbroken and their broken hearts and tears flooded twitter with their emotional tweets. Eventually Sachin made it to the Twitter-Record-Books, he already has probably already has all batting records against his name. Coincidentally, he also entered the cricket record books yesterday with another world record of being the first ever batsmen in history to score 17,000 ODI runs.

Coming to twitter analysis, Twitter Trends is way of knowing what is currently hot over the web all over the world at any point of time. Although I knew about it from a long time but I realized the power of trends ever since I saw Michael Jackson trending. Yes, it was through trends that I saw that MJ had passed away. MJ’s demise stayed on twitter for almost a month. Making him one of the most trending topics ever (see pic).

For those who are unaware of what a ‘Twitter Trending Topic’ is, as Twitter puts it :

Trending topics on Twitter are keywords that happen to be popping up in a whole bunch of tweets. We measure these topics and adjust them in real-time throughout the day. It’s a great way of finding out what’s happening right now.

As far as the Indian twitter connection is concerned, although “India” trended on twitter on the 14th and 15th of August (reason being India’s independence day on 15th of August) there have only 3 incidents (excluding yesterday’s “Sachin” Trending) when an Indian individual has been a trending topic on twitter. India’s dram queen aka Rakhi Sawant, Late Andhra Pradesh CM Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, and eliminated veteran BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party) leader Jaswant Singh, have made it to the trending topics. Unfortunate but a matter of fact is that all of them made it to the trends for the wrong reasons. Rakhi sawant for the disgusting swayamvar show, YSR – when he died of chopper crash and Jaswant Singh – when he was mercilessly thrown out of India’s 2nd biggest political party – BJP.

See Rakhi trending here.

The fourth instance of an Indian making it to the trending topics was Sachin Tendulkar, though made it for the right reasons, his heroic knock, but what was heartbreaking to see was that India had lost the battle. Well, what’s important is not that Sachin was the fourth Indian, but the fact which is overwhelming to know is that he’s the first cricketer who has made it to the list.

We all know that records hardly matter for a man of his stature, but for all of us they really do. Hats off to Sachin for making us proud yet again – on the virtual world this time. Kudos to Sachin, you truly are a Brand. Cheers !

Of late I have been asked by quite a few people about branding and what are the steps to become a brand but today I was asked a good question, What is a Brand or better put Define a Brand.

Wikipedia says : A brand is a name or trademark connected with a product or producer. Brands have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as “cultural accessories and personal philosophies”.

FreeDictionary.com says :

apart from a 100 other definitions.

Let’s talk practical : Shahrukh Khan is a brand, Farhan Akhtar is not; Harsha Bhogle is a brand, Arun Lal is not; Michael Jackson is a brand (yes, he still is), Rakhi Sawant is NOT. Even though I did write about her sometime back and that too in relation to branding, but she never was and can never be.

Shahrukh Khan
In terms of product value, I will say they are brands because the first thing is that THEY SELL. Any Shahrukh film just sells, even though the promos have not been good, even though the film is crap, even though it may have no other superstar in it, what matters is it sells. Same does not hold for Farhan Akhtar.

If Harsha Bhogle is on air, everyone listens to him, his name sells there. The same is not true in the case of an Arun Lal or a Rameez Raja, even though they are seen commentating on all channels and are all over the place, people may listen but do not respect their commentary.

Brand Michael Jackson

An MJ album used to sell without even people listening his songs, they just bought. His shows were a sellout because people knew its M-I-C-H-A-E-L J-A-C-K-S-O-N who’s performing. However old he grew, his shows were always a sellout. He was a household name, even my dad knows his name, even though he never heard a single song of him. On the contrary, even though Rakhi Sawant is a household name, but is her show watched on each and every person ? Though people like me watched a few of her tv appearances, but did we watch it because of Rakhi? No is the answer, and what’s more is that more people switched channels when they saw her on air.

So who is a brand ? Let me tell what does not define it. Any person/product/company which catches the eye of the people simply is NOT termed a brand. It is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Something which fades away with time is NOT one. Negative publicity does NOT make one.

A brand is something/someone/product or company which :

May be you can add more points ? I put what I could recall of but I guess you may have much more to add, looking forward to discuss and learn more from you people.

Tag: michael-jackson

What is a brand ?