Thursday, March 24, 2005

of brand, branding and selling

Yesterday, Pak Lah went on front page of the major dailies. I found it worth noting ‘yesterday’ for unlike Dr M, he wasn’t on front page often. ‘Go sell Malaysia’ he said. ‘We are an unknown brand.’ At least that’s my unqualified summary of his speech.

Cheekily, I hope that the wakil rakyat if not the rakyat will listen. Politicians too. With Pak Lah as the boss wakil rakyat and politician numero uno, they have little reason not to. They have been ‘branding’ too long but not selling. I mean selling Malaysia, contracts excluded.

We have been too long in our habit of branding people. Here in Terengganu (and I am sure elsewhere too) we especially the Malays brand people in either green or blue, ‘orang kita’ or ‘orang dia’. Then there was the branding of worse kind, ‘Mung kape! (kafir) – (You Infidel)’ and of late a much more sophisticated ‘ugly Malay’.

Perhaps if care to look at all the beauty and good qualities in the ‘goods’ around us then there’s plenty to sell. Let’s take from Pak Lah and be done with ‘branding’. Let’s go selling.

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