[PP Brand story] Bold provocative

 

The title of this post is PP Brand.

 

PP stands for Personalised Plate.  Here in our part of Australia, and perhaps where you live too, when you register a car, you can have the registration plate combination of numbers and letters allotted to you, or you can pay more for a personalised plate.

 

There must be many reasons for acquiring a personalised plate, but when someone sees your plate, they see your expression of your identity.

 

When I was growing up on a farm, we (my mother and I) recognised the locals' cars by their number plates.  These were not personalised.  I don't know if the concept even existed then.  But for majority of the locals, particularly of my father's generation there were two types of cars - Holdens and Fords and probably they could recognise those.  These were the men who could articulate a wide variety of types of cattle, and a wide variety of the crops you would grow to progress any particular type of animal to its best.

 

My mother, struggling to identify one out of many in either car type, I suspect, identified the cars by their number plates - or maybe it was just a topic of conversation.  The main two in our lives were ours and my aunt's and my mother referred to herself and the aunt as Mrs PIF and Mrs PEL because those were the letters in the number plates.  Ours was PIF 917.

 

Number plate as identity.

 

And now we have personalised number plates, sure signs of identity and therefore, if possible, brand.

 

Some mean nothing unless to those who know the owner, but there are those chosen with a message.

 

The one that made me super aware of this phenomenon was stopped at the lights as I was waiting to cross the street in our CBD.  It was on a low-slung, hugely expensive sports car, the motor purring as it sat there.  The Personalised Plate held one word and that word was

 

HATE.

 

The car and the plate screamed brand identity.

 

What would you associate with that setup?

 

My first reaction was "In yer face" and this is what Google provided

 
Aggressively or blatantly confrontational
Marked by, or displaying, a boldness of character
Offensive, causing or eliciting a strong negative reaction
Forceful, or having an immediate impact

 

I have had fun writing imaginary brand stories that involve that car.

 

The Archetype? --- has to be --- Outlaw!!