What’s the first word comes up in your mind when you look at these images?

Is it cowboy, or it’s marlboro? i bet most will answer the latter.

Yeah, wasn’t it MARLBORO?
The truth is i even thought it’s related to marlboro when i first saw the brokeback mountain’s movie screens. such a powerful brand.

Thanks to globalization, consumers get the pleasure to choose. From toothpaste to potato chips, children toys to electronics gadgets, low fat milk to beer - you can easily get a choice of ten to twenty.

Take example on toothpaste. In Malaysia, some of the popular brands are are sensodyne, colgate, darlie, oral-b, Aqua Fresh… on top of that, these brands will have their products specifically for children, normal adults, adults with sensitive teeth in various kind of flavor. further more, toothpaste usually comes in several package sizes - big, medium, and small for instant.

Say that you are buying toothpaste for the first time in your life and you know nothing about toothpaste: you will need to decide which brand, which flavor, which type, and which size of it. gosh! you probably need to spend 30 minutes looking into every toothpaste in case you are a caution consumers - just for a darn toothpaste.

This sum up why branding is the most important issues in long term marketing nowadays.

With so much similarities (competition) in the flat world, can you see how hard is it to make others recognized your name? there are too many names in the flat world, and if you failed to differentiate yourself from the others, you are out of the game. marlboro made that by giving an icon to it’s product, google did that by lifting up the standard of search, and dell made it via lowering the computer’s price tag.

To be different doesn’t mean that you have to be really good in what you are doing (does marlboro produce better ciggarates? dont think so), sometimes, it even means to be really lousy or bad. think of william hung from the american idol, or paris hilton, or britney spears - these are well known brand name in the flat world too. are they famous because they sing the best, or they are able to show they are unique and grab other’s attention?