Observing zillions of Indian brands written partly in one of their languages and writings that I do not understand, something peculiar happened. It became crystal clear that:

First

Brands live their life on their own. They are objective entities and not some kind of ghosts or subjective imaginations.

Second

They objectively exist (an sich) but do not necessarily exist for me. They exist for me only if they interact with me. Whether interaction  happens depends on whether there exist attractors between their in mine identity. Like in chemistry: water does not interact with oil but interacts well with lemon juice.

Third

Interaction happens through totality of sensual perceptions, mental conceptions and reasoning at the end. That explains interaction from my point of view. For obvious reasons I cannot define interaction from the point of view of identity that I am interacting with, since I am not that identity.

Fourth

Third point makes clear that although I am a brand in the eyes of all other individuals, I am not a brand for myself. I am objectivity (an sich) that executes for others as a brand. They perceive me through sensual perceptions, mental concepts and reasoning while I am not perceiving myself since I am that perception, mentality and reasoning.

Fifth

While brands exist objectively for them they coexist for us on memetic level. They coevolve with our memes. They are true viruses of our mind (Dawkins). Brands exist “only” as another side of our mental existence as much as we exist only (?) as another side of their life.

Sixth

Symmetry breaks (like in physics) in that we, humans, represent the only external memetic reality while brands for us represent only a part of our external memetic reality. Not all memes are brands.

Seventh

This opens interesting question whether we as humans (memetic creatures) could exist without brands. I cannot prove so far but my thesis would be: yes in principle, not in reality.

Conclusion

Now let us be clear: It was not a revelation, this Indian experience. Brandlife rests on such theoretical grounds.

I found this experience important mostly because it gave me an opportunity to make my thought experiment more down to earth. You know that there is a brand behind a brand that is presented on introducing photo to this post. You even can feel that the brand behind most probably has to do something with some school ar another system that rewards youth. You feel emotions behind this brand, and a part of personality. But you can not grasp its functional promise, not comparative advantage and even less vision and mission.

This example proves that brands can live only as totality of their identity traits, as a complex of memes that constitute brand living body. There is never only one single uniques selling proposition (USP), nor even more of them.

Conclusion 2

No smaller entity than the totality of a brand exist. Brand is its own USP. What I call nine brand elements exist only in totality of their interrelations. Devoid of interrelations each of them loses its function as a brand element. Brand is undivisible complex entity.

Consequence

Identity is the cornerstone of any memetic activity. All ideologies that avoid questions of identity end up as humanism. Such ideologies are prevailing in contemporary western societies. All ideologies that take identity as a cornerstone of humanity will end up eventually as homonism.