Buy your identity…

Today I will discuss something that has been on my mind a while, but I haven’t penned down on anything, because well, I been naturally busy with ordinary life and moving, which makes a guy out of his safe space, get rid of old stuff and get something else to his new place.

Therefore a brother naturally thinks about a lot of matters while moving certain chairs, furniture and books from one place to another. I am seeing this advertisements, commercials and companies spending fortunes applying themselves into our daily lives.

Buy your identity! That is not what their saying directly but indirectly. Indirectly I mean is that you’re to prove yourself and who you are. Because the JEANS you got will tell who you are and who you want to be. The soda you drink will either tell your old house-mom or athletic sports fanatic who eager to live life in a rush. The car you’re pushing from A to B you own it either because you’re a anglophile or just a guy who needs a vehicle to drive in. And this could go on and on.

Buy your identity! What a lie it is. You can have a lot of stuff, house and car. You can buy the whole kitchen shop but that doesn’t make you a gourmet chef. If you drink PEPSI or COLA doesn’t mean bigger then you got a pretense for taste or your living somewhere where the either is sweater taste then the other one. There is nothing else really, if you want to add more to it than you’re making assumption on your own.

Buy your identity! When you see a fine woman smiling on a poster selling any kind of products as a man you look at it and glimpse at it. Even in the day and age when you’re told that photo-shopped model isn’t in the real world looking like that, but somewhere close. We all should in those matters think more about what ideals we want in society and where we want to go? Is this a healthy look upon the human body and with it standards and natural defects that most of us A4 persons develop, and even those models must have them? Right! There must be another route to generate interest that beneficial for the companies and for us citizens to look upon ourselves then get into a state where the body is just a skeleton and a minute after the Frankenstein’s monster arriving and eating your flesh.

Buy your identity! I am just waiting to share more of the joy that the fantastic and evolutionary toothbrush will make my smile as white as the teeth of Tom Cruise, but until then Colgate and Solidox wouldn’t be the magic to save my face this time either.

Nevertheless, we all need stuff, we all need to eat, have clothes, cars and houses. How much they make our identity and our soul is based upon how much place in our life we give them. If we give them nothing more space then we need, then is okay. But when we’re going to the point that we got to have a certain brand and label for everything in life, than we should sit down and think about moves. Because for certainty, that must be a wet dream for a marketer to know that there a person’s discussing and choosing certain products on the base of not quality, price or needs. But for the matter of personal gain and who they are.

As a man, I been there and done this without thinking and is not proud. But your there and wondering after if you were quoting the adverts for the company instead of making your own mind. Here are some examples:

–          Adidas VS Puma: Brothers who compete for making the best sportswear and all over the world people still discuss who is best and who fits best for you.

–          Coca-Cola VS Pepsi: Soda wars that never stops and in the modern way its discussing the difference flavors of the sugarless versions (Zero/Light VS Max). Drink them all just with joy.

–          Heinz VS Local Version Ketchup: The taste-buds you have, doesn’t necessary have to be the same as your friend. Get over it and eat.

–          Apple VS Microsoft Computers: Old discussion and also fight of hardware VS design and just how you feel. Both sides became anchors of identity.

–          Playstation VS Xbox VS Nintendo: Game wars that has put and set identity of both what kind of gamer you are and what kind of controller that fits you. Wonder when this is dying.

I could have made a longer list, but I won’t bore you to death. And I got a life myself so I quit while the game is good.

What I am trying to say is that don’t let the things make who you are. It’s true we all need stuff to live and make a living. A phone, even a smart one to, a computer to write and check important stuff online, we need transports, a place to stay and food in our belly’s. So here we are, we need companies, producers and they need to sell stuff to us. But that doesn’t mean that they have to sell a thinking of building my identity. They can’t build my identity. They can be a part of it, because I need them for certain, not out of pure joy but the way we have built society and our economic system.

The companies and their products make me check and pick after what I needs and sometimes just buying some random crap from a local business that wasn’t intended. But that is life, we are doing it and we all stand by it and see it happening.

Please, I know you can’t fix or make my identity. Please dear companies don’t sell that to me. I don’t need it and your toaster won’t make feel like Ussain Bolt or feel that when I buy a piece of bread that ‘I am making world peace’. We all know that isn’t happening. I am just buying a piece of bred so I can have some for supper and lunch at work. Nothing with the bread that is fascinating. The cereal isn’t a magical box with the sparkling finesse and supernatural powers to fix your diet. It’s just a measly bowl of cereal that I hope you like the taste of, but it doesn’t build your prestige or honor among people. Your action does so. Your beautiful mind does so. The way you write and discuss matters does so. Not you shoes who you runs with gives you stamina. That is your beating heart and lungs who give you power to run down the pathway, not the Puma or Adidas shoes. Even though they either makes the steps more soft or hard depending on which type of shoes you have.

Please, we can’t buy our identity. We can buy products and collectables. We can buy clothes that make us look different, but we can change them and be perceived differently, but our friends and family will know who we really are underneath the clothes and the front we put into the world we live in.

Peace.

Pepsi Challenge of 2014 in Norway: How to be Insulting to its own product but also its competitors!

The Pepsico Company has a new campaign that insults its own normal Pepsi and also ordinary Coca-Cola. The issue is that the Pepsi Challenge of 2014 is that it’s saying that it has more taste then the ones with sugar. Then it’s saying that Pepsi MAX has more flavor then Pepsi and also Coca-Cola which is the main idea for the campaign.

It is true that the sale of Pepsi MAX in Norway is the biggest seller of sodas in recent years. It’s about 30% of the market share alone. So not like the competitors in sales really has a shot on the Norwegian market. The Coca Cola has a big share as well, but the numbers aren’t as big as the Pepsi. Coca Cola had the giant campaign about a year ago on “share a coke with…” somebody. It was a gimmick which was a passing flue that was to play on sharing the coke on social media.

The difference between that and the one now from Pepsi is that they are claiming a lot, that their product is superior and also better than their original Pepsi because their Pepsi MAX is supposed to have more flavor then all sugar based Cola’s. That means that Pepsi, Coke, First Price Cola, RC Cola etc. The supposed taste of sweat drink would not be as good as MAX. Something that is insulting to the competitors, but also its main product Pepsi Cola.

Last time Pepsi did this Coke made the ‘New Coke’ which was a disaster. People wanted the traditional one and therefore it today says ‘Classic’ on the label to ensure the consumer that you is drinking the old sugar based soda that always.

That was in 80s and times have changed. The Coke Company has different diet based cokes on the market. Even ones that have left the market as well like TAB Extra. Today Coke has Light version and also Zero. Which they both market to different crowds: the Light to the woman and Zero for the men. Therefore this challenge of 2014 is supposed to both handle this and the ‘classic’ coke.

If they will earn anything on it, I am sure they will. Even if they somehow already ‘own’ the market for sodas here in Norway, if they have the same campaign other places I am not sure. But here it’s all over the place in the capitol and I am sure in all urban areas. The same way kiosk-chain 7eleven proclaimed for a year ago the taste test of their coffee and if it didn’t taste better than other places you could get your money back or something. Sure somebody bought into that. If people buy that Pepsi MAX has more flavors then the sugar-based ones, I doubt it! We all should know that it’s about preferences and not the actual taste. Because even the cult like fan-base of Dr. Pepper will say that the other sodas just taste bitter sugar-water compared to their favorite soda.

So please stop with nonsense. We’re not buying it! If I was a five year old naïve country boy again instead of a grown ass man, I might get caught in the gimmick, but I am too old and seen enough to know by now what it means. The answer is then, what do you think about it? Or am I walking alone, YNWA right? YOLO, Peace.

If you can’t get enough though! Check this old John Pilger documentary ‘Buurp’:

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