The trainer, about to start a topic on brands, asked the class, 'so which brand comes to your mind when i mention toothpastes?'. Colgate!!!!, the unanimous response, could have been true in any other classroom, at any other time, anywhere else in India and the world. That to us, we, me, is the kind of resonance asssociated to a giant of a brand which kickstarts the day of millions and milions of users worldwide each morning. Let's talk about 'our' viewpoint, What's so special about this particular brand? It is not that users in India have reaped extraodinary benefits by using colgate, in fact, we are considered to be a nation which ranks below average in oral hygiene standards. And 'benefits' is definetly not a top priority of a brand user. No brand of cigarette will be called 'beneficial' by a right minded user.There are certain other things that come first. Most of those like, comfort, value, trust, reliability etc are of the bookish varieties that every tenth grader knows these days. Lets explore one more, hidden but top priority. In fact it is the factor that leads to ultimate leanings towards a brand.

Its called Bias. Yes it not a typing error, its called Bias. We are biased individuals who choose our brands because of a preloaded programme inside us. Deep within the crevices of the hemispheres of logic and creativity, lies our best friend,our bias, the one who makes us choose a red umbrella, a green dupatta, a black sherwani, a silver sliding mobile phone, an ipod which is white, a golden toothpick holder, and yes, a certain red coloured packet of toothpaste. We are totally biased towrds these colours that attract. It is almost unknown to us, many a times it is identified by the marketeers, but not as a bias factor but more as a recall value driver. Red and blue are identified as the two most prominent colours in the world of ads. Both the makers of the ads and the end users are biased towards these colours. And the colour factor is not just one bias that leads to brand loyalty, we are even biased towards the sound of the names! A popular celebrity column in an English daily becomes phonetically profound sounding, with a heading like, 'God in Gucci'. We have enjoyed the hit 2008 release, 'The Devil Wears Prada', see? we have an automatic selection process to names when it comes to attributing it to something beyond us. Now, we shall never again see a slogan like, 'Prada, even the gods like us! The dye is cast. Amrani, you can be the automatic choice of the humble humans. Heaven and hell are divided by your fellow competitors. Snigger,snigger. We hate bias don't we? Yes we do. On paper. Deep within, every choice of a brand we make, is about our biases to things associated with it. Colour and sound are two examples. Long ago a popular noodle brand which enjoyed monopoly in India was marginalised by Maggi. Now Maggi is the favourite of everyone. Is it because of the taste? Not certainly, personally i feel it tastes average, now after all these years. Yet, i too buy it time and again. On introspection i realise that the bright yellow and red imagery on the packet played a vital role in my selection process long ago. Taste and smell of the product too sway the buyers decision. But they cannot be too important. A slight difference in taste leads to initial dissatisfaction, the overall impact of the brand remains encaptured by the colour and sound effect. A highly sucessful layout designer of Indian origin in New York once said, 'they come to me for the effect, for the variations in tones on their product, without it, they all increasingly realize, no body looks at them in an aisle full of only one product! True, we do not look at the less endowed. We all admire the biases in us, remember?, 'tall dark and handsome, 'my fair lady', 'chand sa roshan chehra', these are some of the iconic phrases of the present and past century, the biase to colours goes well beyond. To the birth of man. It is what nature told us to do. To choose from the rack of toothpastes, only the bright red packet.

Aparthied, an illness of the society, resulting in bloodshed, tauma, loss of innocent lives, is to be blamed on our colour biases.Did we ever try to see what is not on the exterior? the value that is intrinsic?. Nope. Had that been true, we would have made useful decisions that help us really. A better husband or wife instead of a pretty or handsome little monster who ruined the rest of our married life. A nutritive diet plan instead of the of junk food that chokes us slowly. A real teeth cleaner whick kills germs and not a sweetned pulp that the 'dentists' from over the world prescribe! A balanced energy drink which replenishes vital nutrients instead of a can of sugar syrup laden with 'secret' additives that the generations of this planet calls 'cola'. See what is not there to see. Taste the essence not the assault of flavours. Feel the warmth and not the false sense of 'power' in your hands. Be biased, but not to something that denounces values. Red is what attracts us. Let's appreciate the value of red that is inside all of us. Not just on a rack.