Who Needs Friends in a World of Brands?
Aug 12th, 2008 by John Stodder
From a Jordan Richardson’s review of OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion, a new book by Lucas Conley:
Marketers and advertisers love a separated, individualized public. Despite our world’s advances in communications technology (cell phones, email, instant messaging services, chat rooms, social networking websites, Blackberry devices), we are, as a people, becoming more and more alone with each passing generation. The pledge of a product and of a sense of belonging and community through that product is becoming more and more attractive.
Conley’s book does an excellent job at demonstrating the magnitude of the issue of brand obsession. With a world sliding ever-downward away from concrete social relationships, families, and a focus on community, marketers are establishing their own brand communities, brand tribes, brand promises, and proxy relationships through Coke or Nike to “fill the void.” And people are buying it.
When branding encroaches on our basic relationship and even on our social policy (post-Katrina New Orleans allocated public funds towards restoration of its “Mardi Gras image” rather than actually addressing safety concerns), it’s time to take a stand. Lucas Conley’s book lays the structure and is a solid read through a whirlwind of examples and stories that describe a riotously disquieting state of affairs in a world gone brand crazy.
Of course, there’s all the research suggesting we don’t trust corporations, advertisers, prominent people, the media or anyone as much as we trust “a person like me.” But the thought here is that the community of “persons like me” is being shaped by marketers. Who do you have more in common with? Your neighbor, or someone who has the same kind of mobile phone as you?
Besides, your neighbor might be a paid shill. In Richardson’s words:
Sphere: Related Content(T)hink about the next time you talk to your neighbour about diapers. She might begin a chat by recommending Pampers or a comparable brand, talking to you about how it makes her baby feel and how the diaper is the best around. What you don’t know is that your fellow citizen has actually been dispatched by Pampers to offer WOM (Word-of-Mouth) about the diapers.
