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Brand power

 Brands have staying power. Some do. Some not so much.

There is even a value assigned to a pop brand (in the case of Coke literally) that is shown on balance sheets as either Goodwill or some such entry that can offset some of that businesses' liabilities.

There is yet another wondrous ranking of most valuable brands that some marketing so and so publishes to rank these companies. As one can imagine the top 10 are worth their weight in gold. Or crypto or whatever their worth one wants to measure it in.

As of 2022 the collective value of top 100 brands topped out at a cool $3 Trillion.  That is 3,000,000,000,000.

The top 10 represent largely well known entities that also happen to command some of the largest market caps and are purveyors of smart technology that runs our daily lives. Some happen to be more pedestrian like Coke and Nike.


  • graphic courtesy Interbrand

I got to thinking what life during the prior yugas (aka time periods so vast and prehistoric that no tangible records exist of who was doing what) was like with respect to branding and marketing.

Today we have a Five Guys burger chain in America that is known for their endless fries campaign. Back during the age of Mahabharata (an Indian epic) there was a war with a clan of 100 with a righteous clan of five brothers or Pandava.  I oft wonder if they had a neon outside their palace that said Five Guys.

The wars were fought betwixt these clans somewhere in the Indus valley with lot of fanfare. I wonder if defense contractors like Boeing, Northrop or Beretta or Heckler et al were the rage back then? Lots of steel was needed I suspect to craft bows and arrows and wheel rims for chariot wheels so must be a busy military complex. Some dog food company today may go with brand like Bow Wow but back then it could have been a major manufacturer of Bows. 

Unlike the failing brands like Toys R Us maybe back then they had some real horse trading outfits like Equines R Us?

And what did they do for food and drink I wonder? Clearly lot of farming and animal husbandry was going on so who was doing the mass production and logistics? Apparently deer hunting was big deal as it is today in midwest and the American south. Except no bows. Mostly rifles.  Also back then there were no Go Pros except only pros went hunting and they did not need a visual record of it to show anyone to stoke their egos. 

I am not sure they had indoor plumbing or electricity for one so all business mostly happened during the day.  I wonder how long one had to visit the facilities if a war was ongoing.  Hurry up and get back here. No toilet paper maybe? No Charmin or Bounty. Just organic growth to clean up.

No Netflix or iphone to stare at after a long day of throwing javelins and riding horses.  I guess one just crashed among all their male buddies and got settled.  I wonder how homosexuality was handled back then.  Too many questions too little time. No Serta to rest your head on.  No space age memory foam... just a horse foaming at its mouth.


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