Monday, April 24, 2006

Brand Name Confusion!

This is a very fascinating phenomena. Many times for a particular product or service, a brand which is providing it, gets its name associated with it, and that product is recognized by the brand name itself. There are quite a few examples of this in India.

Here are a few I know.

1) Mineral Water:- Packaged drinking water or mineral water. The brand name BISLERY is so popular in India, that 90% of the people refer mineral water as BISLERI. If you were to go to a store to buy some bottled water on a hot day, you would ask for a BISLERI.

2) Photocopyer:- All over the world making copies of your important documents is called photocopying. But in India you call it xeroxing your documents. This is probably because Xerox copyer machines were fist to come in India, and became very popular subsequently.

3) Chocalate Bars:- This is probably because untill recently only Cadbury chocalates were available. Elsewhere it would be called, perhaps a chocalate bar, but in India we just call them just CADBURY.

I have also been told that in villages people refer to toothpastes as COLGATE.

I am sure there are several more such examples. If you know do tell me!

17 comments:

The Bhandari's said...

yeah true even I go and ask for bislery and not mineral water :P

Zaki M said...

v.g. observation!

Anirudh said...

i think it is a compliment to these brands for making their brand so visible in their respective categories.

Aditya Pethe said...

Nice obs. There are many examples.
Xerox ,Zipper comman examples.

Perestroika said...

i think i may have got a couple more. but they are not as good as bisleri and xerox.

good knight for mosquito repellent,
kachwa chap for the repellent coils. (second one is more iffy)

Anonymous said...

awesome observation Prathik...

and that was a funny post....some of them i rmbr doing too...

Unknown said...

i have asked for bisleri and been given aquafina

Perestroika said...

@roodge, but u did get mineral water in the end, didnt ya???

Unknown said...

ohhh another one...any form of glucose biscuits.. Parle G.

Perestroika said...

:)


yes, i had infact thought of it too!!!

parle-g for glucose biscuits!!!

also how about AMUL for packaged butter, and RASNA for ready-tomake serbat.

Unknown said...

I thought of some more...ignore the geographic context on some of them though.

Search engine : Google
Mobile phone : Nokia (esp initially in india)
Burgers: McDonalds
Washing powder : Nirma
Bleach : Rin
Bleach : Clorox (US)
Washing Machines: BPL
Cars: Maruti ( for a very long time...not that true anymore)
Milk : Chitale (esp Pune)
Awesome sweets : Chitale Bandhu (Pune)
Auction : Ebay
Phone : Skype
Listings : craigslist

hmmm...cant think of more right now.

Perestroika said...

I must say i did thnk a lot of the ones one your list, but didnt find them as good bisleri.
but i must say i did think a lot of them :)

...like
chitale(but for milk in pune)
cars(maruti)
washing powder(nirma)

but I think GOOGLE is yet another awesome example.

kedar said...

One more thing to include is

Older people still refer softdrink as GoldSpot.....

kedar said...

Older in the sense Elder people...

The Bhandari's said...

Nice discussion is goin one here :)
~preeti

Ashish Agarwal said...

Hey thanx for applauding my article on parsis.. !!
but ur article on bisleri deserves more appreciation ...
good work !!

Anonymous said...

Russian language has the noun "karandash" for a pencil from the brand name of some European manufacturer.