When tranquil turns terror & Why
Anita and friends take a weekend trip to Vythiri. I play a part in recommending the place. They come back exhilarated. Anita tells me how breathtakingly beautiful the place turned out to be. I should know, years ago I lived there for some time. Anita also tells me how touched she was by the people she and her friends encountered. The people at the Resort they stayed were extremely helpful and also forthcoming to every request or query of theirs. Never did they once complain at being bombarded with questions. The guide who took them around too cared for their welfare. He accompanied them on their treks and so on. But at the end of it all, Anita said she was glad to be back in the city of Bangalore. She needed the bustle of city, a far cry from the tranquility of Vythiri, to stay sane.
Interesting.
As grown adults we have gotten used to a certain way of living. A getaway from that, though surely welcome, must last only a certain time. Afterwards we want to be back to what's 'normal'. What's familiar. If we prolong the tranquil unfamiliar, it starts to jar. The tranquil turns into terror and we yearn to go back.
Brands too either recreate the 'familiar' or construct the 'unfamiliar'. The former's what we take to, as part of our 'normal' lives, the latter's what helps us live the 'fantasy getaway'. An Indian, used to noisy buzzing streets takes wholeheartedly to Big Bazaar's 'organised chaos' driven retail atmospherics. The store turns out be an extension of what he encounters in his everyday life, and so it turns into 'familiar' territory. The same Indian at times needs a getaway. It may come in the form of a modern multiplex screening Bollywood fare. For the Indian, reaching and sitting through this nincompoopish fare becomes an 'out of the normal' weekend engagement. His whole family gets into the best of clothes, troop to the mall with the multiplex, order popcorn, and sink into cushioned seats to watch farcical fantasy playing out on the screen. The getaway is complete.
As consumers we tend to take to the familiar more often than the unfamiliar. The former works because its normal, the latter because we need our doses of fantasy. For Anita, Vythiri was the must visit fantasy that could be tolerated for the weekend. Weekdays will see her craving the familiar. A familiar called Bangalore.
Interesting.
Interesting.
As grown adults we have gotten used to a certain way of living. A getaway from that, though surely welcome, must last only a certain time. Afterwards we want to be back to what's 'normal'. What's familiar. If we prolong the tranquil unfamiliar, it starts to jar. The tranquil turns into terror and we yearn to go back.
Brands too either recreate the 'familiar' or construct the 'unfamiliar'. The former's what we take to, as part of our 'normal' lives, the latter's what helps us live the 'fantasy getaway'. An Indian, used to noisy buzzing streets takes wholeheartedly to Big Bazaar's 'organised chaos' driven retail atmospherics. The store turns out be an extension of what he encounters in his everyday life, and so it turns into 'familiar' territory. The same Indian at times needs a getaway. It may come in the form of a modern multiplex screening Bollywood fare. For the Indian, reaching and sitting through this nincompoopish fare becomes an 'out of the normal' weekend engagement. His whole family gets into the best of clothes, troop to the mall with the multiplex, order popcorn, and sink into cushioned seats to watch farcical fantasy playing out on the screen. The getaway is complete.
As consumers we tend to take to the familiar more often than the unfamiliar. The former works because its normal, the latter because we need our doses of fantasy. For Anita, Vythiri was the must visit fantasy that could be tolerated for the weekend. Weekdays will see her craving the familiar. A familiar called Bangalore.
Interesting.
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