what are you willing to do for building Brand Equity?

it's paragraph 1 on page 1 on chapter 1 in marketing and advertising books we read - the Brand Equity is most sacred and should be built and defended to death at all cost, at all times.

and that seems to be what exactly they did for Brand China. and done to the extremes - to perfection. but, it is china though, so it is expected. the question is, being in marketing and advertising, are you tough enough to do the same thing for your brand?

remember that opening night at the beijing olympics? there was a girl there who gloriously sang this song. after watching her, everyone felt an international singing star was born. she wowed the 91,000 live audience in the audience and she achieved the same thing to millions of tv viewers worldwide.

well, the olympic organizers did a milli vanilli on this one. (read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli )

it turned out this girl with a most pretty face (picture here) lip-synched the song. another girl, presumably off stage, unseen by the camera was actually singing. and this where it becomes extremely bothersome and bizarre - the girl with the beautiful voice was judged by the organizers as not pretty enough to be seen on worldwide tv, thus the decision to get a pretty face to appear singing that beautiful voice.

that was done in defense and in building Brand China into perfection. are you willing to do something like that for your brand?

this was not the only major effort executed for Brand China.

the other element of the olympic opening that wowed all of us was the fireworks. before the game began, i wondered what kind of opening china will have. when i saw the fireworks show, that made a lot of sense to me. china centuries ago invented fireworks. what an excellent match that the country where fireworks originated used it extensively during their day of glory.

to what extent were they willing to go through to make sure Brand China was perfect? apparently there is no limit.

some of the fireworks you saw on tv were computer graphics! well, the fireworks were real and were launched in real life at the stadium but what the viewers saw on tv was computer work that was done over a one year period.

the official reason given was that it would have been too dangerous for the helicopters filming the sequence to show it live on tv, thus they opted for computer graphics. (reminds me of the ginebra san miguel photoshop work!)

it's a noble reason, it's also great, well perfect for Brand China.

how many more efforts at building Brand China was executed in china? i have a nagging suspicion we will find out more in the coming days. this is just the 1st week of the games.

now, think about it --- do you have what it takes to build your brand's equity the way Brand China has been doing it?


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read about the pretty face for the beautiful voice here :
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gvdGdbFHvF8M_eJh8CSMEIbZ8tFAD92H0VV81


read about the computer graphics fireworks you saw on your tv here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html