Dear Reader
Waking up to the power and prevalence of brands
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Today I want to write about you. I want to do this as a way of getting to know you better; while also letting you know a bit more about why I’m writing this newsletter and why you might want to read it.
Why should you care about brands? Why would you want to read about brands and how they work?
If you are like most people, you probably think about individual brands all the time, and think about the phenomenon of brands almost never. This is the natural state of things. Brands really want you to think about them—they are insatiably hungry for your attention and devotion. But at the same time, they don’t want you to think too much about them. Doing that tends to spoil the mood.
When you pause for a moment to think about brands, something strange happens. You realize that brands are easy to recognize but very hard to define. This can be a challenge even for people—like me—who have spent a long time working with brands.
I want to give you an accelerated introduction to brands. In the process, I hope to convince you that understanding how brands work is critical to understanding both how our minds work and how the world works.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Your brain is stuffed to overflowing with brands. Ever since you were a small child—before you could even speak! —brands were imprinting themselves on you. You’ve carried most of those brands with you ever since (brands are hard to forget). And you’ve collected countless more over the years.
These brands aren’t only companies and products and services: Brands are cultural not just commercial. This is a very important idea. You have to work harder to recognize your hometown, your country, your favorite teams and sports, or your old school, as brands. But brands they all are.
You recognize brands as effortlessly as you breathe. Each is a container that holds your memories, associations, preferences, and, of course, your judgments. You love some of these brands very deeply. Others, maybe most, just serve some neutral function. A few of them you hate.
Brands very powerful. They reach you on a deep frequency—deeper than thought. Even without you noticing, brands can trigger profound reactions within you. They color your perceptions, evoke your emotions, and influence your thoughts and your actions.
Brands are a kind of language. They are “names plus”. We use them to identify and classify things—any things—and distinguish them from other things. They help to structure the world, to make sense of it and give it order.
While brands start out as identifiers, as we use them, they become our identities. We use brands to define ourselves—to know who we are, how we’re different, and what matters to us. And then we use brands to express those identities to the world.
Once we identify with a brand—not as something we buy, or something we use, or something we like, but as something that tells us who we are—it becomes a part of us. We won’t give it up easily. This is the source of brands’ power.
Our identities are not ours alone; We’re social creatures, and we share our identities with others. Brands bring people together around common identities. They allow people to form bonds and build communities with shared values, rituals, and beliefs. Brands foster belonging and drive collective action.
Because brands are so ubiquitous in our lives, there are many ways for us to look at them.
History
We can look back at thousands of years of human history to see the ways that people have used brands to create civilizations and economies, to wage wars and make peace. In this way we can see how the uses of branding have grown and evolved. Seeing the big picture over time helps us to understand how we got here.
Psychology
We can turn inward to comprehend the psychology of brands. Brands work the way that they do because human beings work the way that we do. Seeing how brands tap into our social and emotional wiring can help us with better understanding how we’re wired. This perspective helps us to know ourselves better. It gives us more clarity over our inner lives and more control over our responses.
Economy
We can use brands to more clearly see how our economies and our cultures work. Brands play an important role in the dynamics of human ingenuity, decision making, and choice. They are the intermediary layer between makers and consumers—we use them as shortcuts to navigate the world and make choices. This perspective can help us understand how new inventions and innovations change the world—and why sometimes they don’t.
Technology
We can understand how brands and branding are different today than they ever have been. The transition to a digital world has been powered by technology but made possible by brands. The digital world is a symbolic world, and it’s needed brands to bring it to life. This transition has changed how brands are created and resulted in an explosion in the number of brands. This new reality can feel intrusive, chaotic, and relentless—because it is.
The choice is ours
We each have a choice. We can live effortlessly and unquestioningly in a world of brands, buying branded products, voting for branded politicians, eating branded food, moving to branded hometowns, and consuming branded entertainment. This is the easier path.
Or we can try waking up. We’ll still live in a world made out of brands, but our relationship to those brands will shift. We’ll gain a deeper recognition of what they mean to us and what they demand from us. Seeing them a new, clearer light may restore some of our power and agency. It can help us avoid traps and habits we might otherwise fall into. And provide a basis for renewing our trust, by restoring our faith.
Image credit: Frederick Edward Hulme, 1898 https://pdimagearchive.org/images/be5c8b9d-05e8-4972-84c7-0a39480f6999/
The red, white and blue, and the stars and stripes that are the American flag has shifted its meaning over many years, and now it’s become a very troubling brand for many of us.
I remember attending a protest, one of many, in NYC. On this particular day it was raining. My partner at the time brought an enormous American flag umbrella that his father, a retired marine, had given him when he was in a pinch for one on a visit to Virginia. My partner kept it tucked away deep in our closet, but on this day, he took it outside, opened this massive thing up and swung it overhead. The idea he had was that we were going to take back the flag and reclaim its proper meaning.
As we walked in solidarity at what might have been an anti Trump rally, I remember thinking “How strange. I’m feeling pretty ashamed right now to be standing next to this symbol. It just doesn’t hold the same values I admire anymore. I can stare at the thing forever, but I can’t seem to identify with it. The years of nationalist ideology has stained the cloth and now all I see is the dirt.
I’m here. This is my country, but it is not my brand.
I guess there’s always hope in rebranding.