As I took a bus (I don’t drive in Singapore) on the way to a game of tennis, I realized that within the 15 minutes journey, I only saw about 3 familiar landmarks. McDonalds, KFC, and the neighborhood library. As I stepped out the bus, I thought, hmmm, what were the names of the other stalls along the way…I couldn’t come out with a good answer. I knew that there were 2 furniture stalls, 2 coffee stalls and some other amenities but I didn’t know their store names. They were invisible to me even though they were there.

Why did I remember McDonalds and KFC then?

A better question would be how.
When I saw the two fast food restaurants, the images of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders just appeared in my mind without thought. Wow, I thought. What just happened? I sat down and gave it a thought about what happened. Then a magical thing happened.

Most of the brands I could recall without really trying ARE associated with people. Besides McDonald’s (Ronald McDonald), KFC (Colonel Sanders), there was Virgin (Richard Branson), Apple (Steve Jobs), Microsoft (Bill Gates)…then I thought about clothes, what were those I could recall without really trying, Armani (Armani), DKNY (Donna Karen) … in business, Seth Godin as Seth Godin, Tom Peters as Tom Peters… just any word, Money (Warren Buffett), Real Estate (Donald Trump), books (Seth Godin again, he has so many good ones)…

Images of people are sticky, they stick to the mind. I could also see their faces just by mentioning the above names, can you? *Smiles* What do you represent? What do you think people associate your name with? Or are you invisible? Go represent something if you haven’t, and dominate it!