Is your marketing outrageous?- Third Umpire On Branding

So what precisely is branding yourself, and how can it help my business?

All a blog is, is your own website.

It gives you the chance to begin cultivating valuable business relationships with people like you.

Don't underestimate the power of offline advertising as a branding strategy...

Flyers, business cards, door hangers, magnets, even some postit notes stamped with your web address. An ad that succeeds need not always be politically correct but one that identifies with the target consumer.. Though I daresay people like me also voice their opinion using the Net and making their opinion heard, if not count.Is it fair?Another ad which stirred things up quite a bit was the Fair ; Lovely ad - I am sure you remember the one with the air hostess, featuring a father who openly wishes he had a son and the indignant daughter uses Fair ; Lovely, becomes an air hostess and takes her father to a five-star restaurant where the father naively asks her for the same cup of coffee that created happy chaos just a few weeks ago.

I have seen enough people rave and rant about this ad. I suppose if you live in Lavelle Road in Bengaluru, Boat Club Road in Chennai or Nepean Sea Road in Mumbai, this ad can affect your sensitivities and make you vocal. The target audience, however, lives in interior Tamil Nadu or Gujarat, where people unabashedly demand not only dowry but fair brides. To my mind, at least, this ad fit the bill, never mind what people had to say about it and boy did they have a lot to say, even though this was in the ‘pre-blog' days!Take me to the church on timeA recent ad that stirs up similar sentiments, if not more acute, given the fact that we have people who are blogging, is the ad for Tanishq. You might have seen this ad, which features a modern family, the daughter driving an SUV, the family speaking English, a girl undecided on marriage, but whose life plans quickly change for the better as she tries on the wedding collection from Tanishq. Is it also so easy to unravel a woman's mind? Don't people say that a woman's mind is as unpredictable as English weather even if the current one promises to be the hottest in years? ‘Marriage is an important occasion.' ‘Anyway one has to get married, why not look good on the occasion?' to a lone voice saying "As if a girl would get married for the jewellery!"