The GOOD news about branding

[ by Carrie McLaren ]

In these days when the word "brand" has become a stand-in for any person, place or thing, speaking English can be a little depressing. We now have two kinds of nouns: common nouns and brands. "Apple" is no longer just something to eat, and "Yahoo!" is not what to shout when feeling celebratory. Every day brings more brands. The chalupa is a brand, as is Taco Bell, and of course parent company Pepsi is a brand, owned by Tricon International, a lesser-known brand, unless you’re looking at global corporate giant brands. Ingredients can be brands. Nutrasweet. Intel Chips. Olestra. And pretty much every thing or place surrounding brands, from humans to mountain ranges to countries, is brandable.

An alleged Ku Klux Klan sympathizer is rescued by the NYPD. (Village Voice, 11/2/99; photo by Srinivas Kuruganti)

Branding, clearly, is out of control. However, for those of us unnerved about corporate power, it provides an invaluable "in." Like the brainless zombies in Gamma People, brands contain the seeds of their own destruction. The shift toward branding corresponds with a shift away from manufacturing, away from concern with the actual product. Who knows which exploitative factory in what country your Nikes came from? Ultimately, what makes them Nikes is not their material origins, or the materials themselves, but the name on the rubber. The brand. Sneakers might be a bad example since people can tell the difference between Nike or Reebok or Adidas. Okay, then consider bottled water or aspirin or colas: The more products are alike, the stronger the reliance on branding. The product is the brand; the product is the image. And therein lies advertisers’ Achilles heel. It is easier to damage an image than, say, pull off a successful boycott. It is easier to harm a company when all they’ve got is a brand. Ad parodies illustrate how this works: "dilute" the brand by associating it with whatever the company would least want it to be associated with: mutilated cow innards for McDonald’s, excrement in Frito-Lay "Wow!" chips, lynchings by Tommy Hilfiger (or Coke or Denny’s or Coors). Badly designed bootlegs are also a good idea: huge Nike decals plastered across dump bins, Coca-Cola dime bags, etc. Starting urban myths, creating "rogue" websites, and sending mass email can also effect some quality brand-damaging.

Of course, attacking brands has its limits as an activist strategy . . . but, hey, this is about the GOOD news.

A Muslim gentleman donning a Nike T-shirt takes "just do it" to heart, hijacking a New Delhi jet and its 160 passengers. (Los Angeles Times, 12/29/99)

Paul Kemer (wearing Pelly Ellis), after being charged with sexually abusing a student. (New York Post, 3/14/00)

An unidentifed Elian worshipper is carted away. (Miami New Times, 4/27/00)

A homeless man in Brooklyn, N.Y., poses for the picture. (photo by Chris Coxwell).