Brand Obsession

I don't know how many of you have heard of Carl Zeiss spectacle lenses, but they're fairly well-known here. There's actually a huge market for lense brands. So far, the most popular here are Essilor and Carl Zeiss. Zeiss, as you might have already figured, is a German company.

They have this thing of marking all of their lenses with their company logo in the corner as a symbol of quality. Which is totally understandable. And they use that as one of their marketing thingies, that they're marked with a sort of seal of quality. That's nice. My glasses are actually Zeiss lenses and they really are very good quality. However, lately, they've been taking their brand thing much too far.

Their new advertisement consists of some guy in an office showing off his branded shoes, watch, etc and a pretty girl looks down into his cubicle to see him. Upon seeing his glasses which she somehow detected were not Carl Zeiss lenses, she exclaims "What's on your eyes man?" makes a face and everyone in the office laughs.

Several things about this adverstisement make me want to break the TV. First of all, why is that man showing off his brand-name clothing and accessories instead of working? Secondly, why is everyone in the office so transfixed by his brand-name clothing and accessories? And that woman, how does she have the power to see a miniscule mark on his lenses from a foot and a half away? And lastly, who cares?

Their new slogan is "Brand nahin toh style nahin" which basically means "If its not branded, its not in style." This advertisement honestly insults me? What they're basically saying is that we a society are so obsessed with brands and style that even our glasses must adhere to this label-loyalty and therefore must be branded.

This is what advertisers percieve us to be. As this ad must be bringing them success, I can only assume that this is what we percieve as the truth. And we can accept this truth. I refuse to accept it. Carl Zeiss is ringing in profits from this philosophy but I find it insulting. Or perhaps I am naive and the world really is so insanely controlled by who made their clothing.

The point of this: I don't know. Its just been bugging me for a long time now.
Posted on October 26th, 2007 at 05:29pm

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