Brands have come and gone but over the years certain brands have been built which are no longer brands in themselves, but have real life personalities like human beings breathing in the real world. The article discusses the lifestyle advertising technique which has helped to build such brands with reference to successful advertisements like Lux, Asian Paints' Gattu, etc., and also pros and cons of such advertising and branding methods.

In the context of modern business, when we look at different brands built over the years, it is easily noticeable that the brands created through advertising depicting some particular personality (fictional or real) have gained roaring success. In the case of the soap brand of Lux, advertised by top-notch Hindi film heroines, or the fictional character `Gattu' of Asian Paints, it is clear that these brands are better known through these personalities than their features or functionalities. These types of brands can be called as `Breathing Brands' which means that these brands are like living human beings—they live in the mind of the consumers, breathe like human beings.

And this phenomenon has been successful over the ages and in modern business it becomes very much relevant as the consumers are becoming more and more demanding. As the big world is networked and Internet has shrunk it, the brands which are like human beings relate to the consumer psyche easily. In order to build a successful brand, a company has to bond to its customers on a lifelong basis. And when such living and breathing brands are created through effective advertising, the customers get a feeling of being a part of the brand. That is exactly what advertising wants to achieve. Brands like Virgin or Kingfisher have been created based on all the promotions done with the personality of Richard Branson or Vijay Mallya as the epicenter. Such brands are now like living entities which become a part of life of customers. To achieve sustainable success over a long period this type of advertising is very crucial.

Advertising Express Magazine, Breathing Brands, Lifestyle Advertising, Llifestyle Advertising Techniques, Marketing Technique, Branding Strategies, Vijay Mallya, United Breweries, Corporate Strategy, Lux, Marlboro, Onida television, Reid & Taylor, Air India.