A Brand Knowledge Pill a day, keeps the unhealthy symptoms away. The following are brand tips specifically designed keeping in mind Bangladeshi brands and businesses.
Day 15 Pill 1 (Morning)
What does your password say about you?
The most common password in the world used by people is “Password”. That explains a lot about the state of internet security in the world.
In a recent interview Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said that world is one disastrous scandal away from really looking at privacy concerns more seriously. This of course was a hidden dig at the No.1 enemy Google, but his message cannot be taken lightly. Thanks to the media being rife with stories relating to hacking and stolen passwords; the biggest perception the western world holds about China is that they are always trying to hack into your private world and steal your secrets. There are even growing numbers of people out there convinced that malicious parties are working on ways of hacking private time. Although at the moment, this is all just speculation, there is no telling what the future might hold for privacy. The fact that the USA Government might be doing the same and we are willingly signing away our own privacy rights to technology companies with the illusion of secrecy and safety is a message that is somehow not getting through. When ex-CEO Eric Schmidt was asked to address the privacy concerns of the general public regarding Google products, his blunt reply was asking people not to put anything on the web that we want to keep a secret. The fact that every one of us still uses an e-mail password and that we guard it from everyone in the world already tells us the futility of that argument.
We all have secrets to keep and we all care of our privacy. But still we use passwords that are opposite to what we are supposed to be doing. Internet security 101 is telling us to come up with difficult to guess passwords combining characters and letters; not use same password everywhere and not write it down anywhere. But in reality that kind of passwords is very difficult to remember and since the key factor in fixing password is about memory, we end up committing all sorts of password security violations.
If you want to make data more secure, asking people to come up and remember super complex passwords is not the way to change behavior. People will continue to gravitate towards simplicity and something easy for memory. The behavior that should be targeted to change is not the construct of the password but what the content of the password says. Usually a password is something meaningful to that person – ranging from wife’s name to favorite pet’s birthdate. A simple way to throw a potential hacker off his track is using password that can never be traced back to you thematically and has no relevance to you. For example, if you are a teen age boy sitting somewhere in Alabama; having a password about Dutch ballet dance moves should be furthest removed from your life and hence very difficult to guess.
Is this a full-proof strategy? Unfortunately, no. But it’s a more feasible strategy than asking people to remember a string of numbers and characters; and asking them to change it for different apps and platforms.
Day 15 Pill 2 (Night)
Is your Body Image holding your career back?
A 2004 study by Cornell University Associate Professor John Cawley found that when the average white woman puts on an additional 64 pounds, her wages drop 9%. Obviously for non-white women this drop tends to be much starker. That is why women often try to lose weight either by working out in the gym or by consuming products like Bio X4 probiotics.
Anyway, in another study, Charles Baum, of Middle Tennessee State University, reported in the journal Health Economics that obesity could lower a woman’s annual earnings by as much as 6.2% and a man’s by as much as 2.3%.
A more obvious place to look for discrimination would be the recruitment interview itself. Almost all recruitment decisions are made based on a shallow first impression. People who are not comfortable with their body type usually project less confidence in interviews. Moreover there is scarcity of really fashionable plus size clothing. All these factors taken together creates a hurdle that is too big for some people to overcome and the breeding ground of discrimination against body type.
A similar trait to body type discrimination would be the necessity to look young and good looking. It was previously believed that the obsession for anti-aging drugs and cosmetics was limited to the bored housewives who have the money and pretty much nothing to do except spend it on themselves. But during a pan Asian research, this commonly held perception was challenged as it turns out Asian women think that to land a good job, you need to look young; preferably not over 30. In that same research 64% Chinese women said that looking young is important to land a good job.
It’s a startlingly odd realization, but one that might just be true. The glass ceiling might be not just made of glass, but perception towards your body image.
By Shahriar Amin
About the Author
Shahriar Amin is currently working in HongKong in one of the largest FMCG companies in the world. He is also the creator the first brand related blog in Bangladesh (http://shammograffity.wordpress.com)
