OUGD401: Study Task 3 - Branding & The Consumer Self Points

"In an era in which people are brands and brands are culture"

After having read an lengthy extract from the Naomi Klein's book 'No Logo', I couldn't help but realise how much branding has taken over not only the media, sports and also the consumers, yet we don't realise it. Not all brands, but a large selection of them seem to consume everything in their path, for example Nike is referred to as a Superbrand. 'They're a company that swallows cultural space in giant gulps'. "This is a shoe company that is determined to unseat pro sports, the olympics and even star athletes, to become the very definition of sports itself."

The way Naomi narrates the book makes it seem as though she, herself, has been sucked into the brands and has fallen victim of their ways. This is down to her very informative way of talking about the issues at hand, as it appears as though she's talking from a personal standpoint, backing up her points with past on goings that happened during her lifetime.

Key Points & Quotes

From the extract I selected a mixture of quotes and points that I think exemplify this idea that there is a very strong link between branding and the consumer self.

Branding grew with people both physically and mentally. More and more people wanted brands and cared less about the clothes, which in turn meant that brands grew exponentially.

The merger between media & catalog reached a new high in 1998, with the launch of Dawson's Creek TV show. All of the cast members of the show had been kitted out with J crew clothing, whilst coincidentally enough J crew advertisements were based around the Dawson's Creek show theme, including, of course some of the cast members as models.

A quote that ties in well with this point is that overtime other companies caught onto this idea of merging media and catalogue so much so that all sorts of different areas of the internet wanted to be in on it. For example, after reading Globe reviews, readers were able to click to order books directly from Chapters chain of which had just been reviewed. Also on the Teen People site, readers can click and order cosmetics and clothing as they read about them"

'Sure, manufacturers will launch noisy interruptions if they are locked on the wrong side of the commerce/culture divide, but what they really want is for their brand to earn the right to be accepted, not just as advertising art but simply as art.'

'What has become clear is that corporations aren't just selling their products on-line, they're selling a new model for the media's relationship with corporate sponsors and backers.'

'These are not sponsored events: the brand is the event's infrastructure; the artists are it's filler, a reversal in the power dynamic that makes any discussion of the need to protect un-marketed artistic space appear hopelessly naive.'

'Brands and stars have become the same thing. But when brands and stars are the same thing, they are also, at times, competitors in the high-stakes tussle for brand awareness, a fact more consumer companies have come ready to admit.'

The biggest and most important part of the excerpt is how nike are essentially a human branding company. Selling every piece of clothing imaginable, all of it with their branding on it. Some Nike employees even have a swoosh tattoo on their calves, not only that but tattoo parlours all over North America have said that the swoosh has become their most popular item.