The Perplexed Consumer - The Enlightened Marketer

My thoughts go for a roller coaster ride when I see people stretching themselves to great extent on to their outer appearance in terms of what they are wearing, what they are riding and so on. This actually has a Psychological aspect behind it. The real person (Actual Self) is a different patch than what one want himself to be seen like in public (Ideal Self). Ironically, in most of the cases we are made to have differences between above two aspects. To make people accept you the way you want is a complex thread of wandering thoughts not finding place for desired destination. That's where Brands come to rescue. There is always solution for everything. And we all have these thought trains. We all will use the Brands to project ourselves. Why not, it’s simple in execution and results into fulfillment of something what Maslow called as Self esteem need. No wonder Brands have become preferred way of communicating status. Otherwise, why one would buy a Mercedes or BMW when the same distance can be traveled/covered in Nano or Maruti 800. It’s this psychological bizarreness of social animals (Humans) that make an intangible five alphabets word "YAHOO" written in certain font’s style as a brand more valuable than all the tangible assets of YAHOO taken together all over the globe. I am not arguing, I am okay with that. But the point here is, these brand building stories are the perfect example of "Little drop makes the ocean". It’s we people who make brands and not companies who own them. Irony is we do not know this. Every single person liking and acceptance of brands contributes in its building and hence every person counts.
The story has other turns also. That also roots back to the self esteem and aspiration level of people. People who are not financially sound or even struggling for smooth execution of life would buy a brand not within his reach to match himself up with the people who he would like to be. Here comes the punch, most of the time people don't realize that they are doing this. Marketer wants to keep this greediness alive because that's how you make a market. Close down the chapters of social responsibility. The days of Mahabharata and Ramayana are gone. Peculiar, but that seems sensible because the days when we use to have Ram and Laxman (Who never run in the race of materialistic approach of projecting what they are not) are also gone!