...Be seen, or you're a nobody..

A quote captured my attention as I flipped through yesterday's The Star newspaper this morning:

"Be seen, or you're a nobody"

..hence it concluded all my flickers of thought for the last two days.

********************
Yesterday

Remember a blog post I wrote July last year entitled "More than meet the eyes"? The title was a quote extracted from the movie "Transformers", but the post was all about another coming-soon movie "Cloverfield"; or to be more exact, it was about marketing and promotion strategy of the movie.

I went for the movie yesterday. Cloverfield is finally released and all the puzzles they played around with in their marketing and promotion strategy, finally revealed... and the revealing might bring some complaints from some audience who felt being cheated by their publicity strategy -- well, for me, the movie was not bad, it was unique, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, they succeeded to draw your attention, and make you spent some bucks and go into the cinema.

I used to say that the publicity strategy was brilliant, and now I still have the respect for it.

********************
Still yesterday

Came out from the cinema my buddies and I hung out in the ever-grand-and-always-expensive Pavilion, and we met a group of Salsa-Jazz band performing in front of Parkson. There was no host of emcee or wh0-so-ever telling us the name of the band (if any..), but they managed to draw the attention of the crowd with their music.

I started to ponder:

1. If the Salsa-Jazz band was trying to make their name known, shouldn't they be introduced with a name?

2. Cloverfield became everybody's topic of discussion in www world without its name being introduced, so what's the matter about 'being introduced with a name'?

3. But Cloverfield used the name of J.J. Abrams to draw the attention of the world, and the brand of 'J.J. Abrams' was a major factor that worked the magic of their publicity strategy out. Do we see a symbiotic relationship where one side is taking advantage of another side here?

4. So if the Salsa-Jazz band wishes to introduce their music to the crowd, performing in *the* Pavilion is definitely brilliant as part of their publicity strategy which applies a symbiotic relationship. But will that help to make their name known as well?

********************
The day before yesterday

The board of committee of our department young professional club was having a meeting and discussing about volunteerism.

No details here but here's how I look at what we've discussed:

If the Salsa-Jazz band can be a metaphor for our club; then let's say 'sending music to everybody's heart' is our volunteer effort....

Condition 1: we can be as anonymous as we like, to reach out to those in need -- -- like the Salsa-Jazz band, only be called as a Salsa-Jazz band, no name, but still playing wonderful music, sending it to everybody's heart;

Condition 2: we attach to a big name in volunteerism, so that we can reach out to something bigger, help in a larger scale -- -- like the Salsa-Jazz band performing in Pavilion, so that their music can reach to more people -- -- talking about symbiotic relationship, but still, we remain unknown.

Condition 3: we make our name known, for something which is *potentially* bigger, in volunteering, or in something else -- -- like the Salsa-Jazz band, if they got their name becoming a brand, they'd have much more potential to achieve their mission, which is promoting their music to much larger crowd -- -- here we refer back to the case of J.J. Abrams, because of the brand attached, Cloverfield managed to introduce another genre of filming idea to a bigger crowd, onto a bigger screen. Yes, The Blair Witch Project had the same way of filming, but it never hit the big screen, remember?

********************
Today, right here right now

I'm still not clear.

Is the word 'BRANDING' a magical word that we need to brush up on? A BRAND needs to be come with true quality, or a true quality will automatically bring up a BRAND?

Are we dealing with a 'chicken or egg' question?

"Be seen, or you're nobody" or "Make yourself SOMEBODY, or you'll not be seen"?

Are we dealing again with another 'chicken or egg' question?