An encounter with Brands - RA's Brand Timeline

Being a person possessing a mind of somewhat creative bent, notwithstanding the fact that I work in the wonderful world of Branding, I am quite peeved at myself that I didn't think of this much earlier. Last Friday, during the course of browsing the web for some creative inspiration, I came across this cracker of a post from Jane on her blog 'dearjanesample'.

Jane had this 'obvious but never realized' idea to keep track of all the brands she interacts with on a typical Friday. It is one of these ideas that every modern blogger stumbles upon and is really mad at themselves for not coming up with this on their own. In fact, this method is quite interesting to take note of all the brands you encounter on a daily basis. It is in fact, quite astonishing to see how many brands we use in the course of a typical day.

The toothbrush you use? Google? Your breakfast? The cigarettes you smoke? Your soap? Try to think of all the brands you encounter everyday. Your computer brand is quite obvious, but do not be surprised to see a staggering number of logos surrounding you that you aren't necessarily are aware of. As a matter of rule, we do tend to take a lot of things for granted when they are so deeply rooted into our subconscious.

Creating a list of logos I interacted with in a timeline was quite eye-opening since I now see what brands obviously get a lot of attention (meaning - A load of cash into their bank accounts) and it was really surprising to realize how many brands I didn’t think about at all!

This 'list' would serve as a visual representation of your typical day in 'Brand Terms'. In branding and advertising parlance, its called a Brand Timeline Portrait. I chose Saturday, the following day of reading Jane's post, and as I was creating the list it became pretty clear to me that this thing was going to take quite a bit of time (its a very long, long list of logos). But it also served as a reaffirmation of my personality traits as it does reveal a lot about me.....

A Day in Brands - My Brand Timeline Portrait
(click on the images for a larger view)














I think we can have some fun with this, I urge everyone who reads this post to draw up their OWN DAY IN BRANDS. It’s fun and who knows what will turn up?

So if you have your own blog, post your Brand Timeline Portrait and just make a link back to my story.