The Religion Of Branding

I’ve just found this three-year-old interview with Naomi Klein about the problem of branding. Here are some extracts which bear Christian reflection:

In a marketplace where it’s so easy to produce products, where your
competitors can essentially match you on the product itself, you need
to have something else. You need to have an added value, and that added
value is the identity, the idea behind your brand. And this is spoken
of in many different ways, “the story behind the brand.” I don’t think
we can understand this phenomenon just in terms of how easy it is to
produce products. I think it also has to do with a reaction to a
culture in the ’80s where people were longing for some kind of deeper
meaning in their lives.So what brands started selling was a kind of pseudo-spirituality — a
sense of belonging, a community. So brands started filling a gap that
citizens, not just consumers, used to get elsewhere, whether from
religion, whether from a sense of belonging in their community….

How has branding moved into politics?
I think it was when George Bush went to Baghdad for Thanksgiving and
held up the turkey. I have a friend who says that since September 11,
she’s felt as if she’s been living in a movie. What I realized when I
saw that image was that, in fact, it’s not that American politics is
being influenced by Hollywood, but that it’s being deeply influenced by
Madison Avenue. That image with Bush holding the turkey was a
quintessential advertising image. It was more than just a political
photo op. He was being treated in a sense as a corporate mascot — not
as a president, but the corporate mascot of the nation. That image of
holding that platter is a quintessential advertising image, almost like
Aunt Jemima, the early brand images of the comforting corporate mascot

What do you say to the American who feels overwhelmed by all this?
One other thing I wanted to say is that I do think that we care more
than we’re given credit for. And I always think it’s quite amazing that
after September 11, there was this amazing outpouring of caring. And
the response from the government of the U.S., from Bush, was, “Go
shopping.” And it wasn’t just once or twice. Essentially the entire
government response after September 11 in terms of what individuals
could do to make a difference was to shop. There was a big campaign in
Canada; we got in on this, and we had “Canada Loves New York” weekends,
where we would just come here and shop. And the idea that … the
greatest way to express solidarity with people is through consumption,
when people were responding in ways that were much, much more
significant and human, and [were] helping each other in a time of need,
and [then they were] told by the government: “No, do something really
isolated; just shop. Save your country; support people that way.”How do we wake up?

Can we break this cycle of artifice?
I don’t think there’s a way out of this until we actually — not to
get too New Age here — but I think we really need to ask ourselves
what we’re honestly shopping for when we’re shopping. Sometimes you’re
really just shopping because you need something, but shopping is now
the primary leisure activity, the primary family activity, and a lot of
it is extraordinarily un-fun and unsatisfying. And I think that it is
important to ask yourselves what you’re actually shopping for. If you
are shopping for community, if you are shopping for democracy, you
actually are not going to get it at the mall. And you will only be
cured of this particular malaise if you find ways to fulfill those
desires elsewhere. That’s certainly the only way I kicked my shopping
habit.

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