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There is really nothing wrong with the brand "Bollywood", except that the Indian film industry has become far more powerful and far-reaching than anything else like this in any other country of the world, and even larger than Hollywood. In hindsight, decades ago,
who in the right frame of mind would have picked up a blatant side-kick named "Bollywood" as a cheap copy of "Hollywood", a theme that has already been further diluted and abused by hundreds of other adventurous film industry brands all over Asia, from "Ollywood" to "Jollywood", creating confusion and ripping away the original centrality of the true brand?

There is only one Silicon Valley, one Eiffel Tower, one Disneyland, one Wall Street one Times Square and only one Piccadilly Circus; the other sound- and/or look-alikes are just desperate copycats. What India needs today is an all-out war on all fronts to tackle these copycat problems, and accept higher grounds with global leadership mandates to create brand new original world-class, global potential iconic identities.

Today, Walt Disney is only dancing in heaven, after seeing how Disneyland has created hundreds of similar copycats from few mega sites to hundreds of single fly-wheels with two guys in gorilla outfits, jumping around in similar named theme-parks. What's wrong with people, and why they prefer to go on their hands and knees, sneaking, picking, cutting and pasting from some one else's well-established original brand idea while patting themselves for their smartness and accepting this form of suicidal-branding, a kind of a self-inflicting identity wound, which never heals and never allows to becomes super icon? Surveys have proven that copying legendary icons only kills brilliant original ideas into obvious copies looking dead-beats and eventually ending up in oblivion. The black and white proof of this global phenomenon is already sitting on Google.

Without a doubt, there is no country with a film industry, with the size and dynamics of current Bollywood, which on a global scale, not only attracts a larger audience and more attention than any other force in the marketplace, but also carries the most global influence. This six billion dollar industry will double again in size in few years, and is just trapped in a dumb brand identity with no direct connection to Mumbai, as the name Bombay is just passé.

The real Hollywood on the other hand came about in 1887, when the founder Harvey Wilcox, Daeida's husband, drew up a grid map for a town which he filed at the county recorder's office on February 1, 1887, the first official appearance of the name 'Hollywood'. He named it after the "Mass of the Holy Wood of the Cross".

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Naseem Javed, recognized as a world authority on corporate image and global name identities, is a harsh critic of casual and accidental naming. He is a dynamic speaker on corporate image and branding issues, and is also the author of Naming for Power. He founded ABC Namebank International, an image and branding consultancy over 25 years ago.
Website: www.abcnamebank.com