Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

Went to see “Yes Man” by Jim Carrey (I had some time to kill and it was the only movie that was starting, sue me). Before the movie, there were two trailers for “Marley & Me” and “Revolutionary Road”.

All three movies had their own respective plots, but all more or less played around with the same idea: work is a drag, and responsibilities are prohibiting you (the American male) from being free and realizing your true self. It’s the old “the mainstream vs. the avant garde” rhetoric that’s been a staple of Hollywood and American culture for decades now. Money and “career” eat at your soul, and only by letting go and embracing freedom, spontaneous whims and creativity can you truly be free – just ask William Whyte and “The Organization Man”.

Beware the Organization Man, for he wears a gray flannel suit and he has no soul.

Naturally, the truth about work life isn’t as dreary as movies would have us to believe, and the avant garde isn’t all it’s cooked up to be (if you can even call it that anymore). But the myth remains.

I’m wondering if we’ll see a decline in how often this myth is featured in American cinema. All three movies I mentioned were given a green light or shot during the end of the economic boom cycle. Life was good, jobs were aplenty and secure. People had the luxury to dream about a better life (and most of all, a better job). But now we’re in a recession and people are more thankful to have a job in the first place. Will Hollywood sense this or keep rolling out films that basically declare that your job stinks? If this recession is going to be as bad as some people speculate it will be, then its impact on contemporary culture should be quite imminent, and Hollywood is usually the first to smell a cultural trend.

I’m definitely keeping my eye on the list of upcoming movies.

Mashable outlines the problems Facebook has on monetizing its user base. It’s a long read, but the part they quoted from the New York Times struck me:

“Advertisers distract users; users ignore advertisers; advertisers distract better; users ignore better.”

This is one of the main problems I found with advertising in my master’s thesis. Advertisers are in an arms both against other advertisers and against consumers. All new advertising innovations (new media to advertise in, persuasion tactics etc.) are quickly copied by rival advertisers and they lose their effectiveness quite fast. And on the consumer front, as time goes by consumers become increasingly advertising savvy and more likely to ignore or “see past” advertising (as outlined in the NYT article).

I guess this is and always will be the advertiser’s problem; how to deal with constantly declining returns on advertising. Some brands choose to just out-spend the competition, hoping for first mover advantages in new marketing tactics by hiring the advertising talent du jour. Some brands are more responsive and consumer-centric, and move their focus away from practices to which consumers are no longer responding.

To me, the best way address this problem is not to concentrate on the medium, but rather on the message. Sure, marketing tactics are important, but in this day and age it’s becoming more clear that a message worth spreading within the consumer base is more vital than the right advertising channels. Or rather, as they ask in the Mashable article, “why consumers click?”.

I had touched on this subject in a previous post where I argued against letting “the mob” take over the brand too much because the brand will become rudderless and a subject for groupthink, which I felt was a death-knell for a brand. I wrote that “When people are really fanatical about a brand, they will seek to take ownership of it. They see themselves as the only “worthy” chroniclers of the brand and its meaning.”

This subject has been rattling in my brain for over a year now, dating all the way to this post by David Armano. In it, he asks:

If brands let their communities define them—are they strong brands in the first place? The answer is yes. My voice is my voice. It will not change—I am who I am. But my thoughts and actions can be influenced by what you say and do. Are brands willing to do the same? Does this make them weak or strong?

I see myself as sort of centrist on this matter, but leaning slightly to the “community defined brands are weak” side, but with certain reservations. Given that I’ve written about brand meaning and its evolution in this blog a great deal, it would be quite implausible for me to argue that communities don’t define brands – even strong ones. Again, this is not an argument that brands shouldn’t reach out to consumers on Twitter or anything, quite the contrary. But brand managers would do well to keep their heads cool and not go overboard with reaching out.

Granted, a community-defined brand will be stronger than any mind-share branded brand that doles stale and unimaginative advertising and doesn’t make any effort to connect with its audience. That’s a given. But what I do feel is that really strong brands should and do take initiative in shaping the conversation around their brand. I’d even argue that the strongest of all brands aren’t afraid to challenge their communities and their perceptions – and they do so successfully. And this brings us to the inspiration to this post, the perfect metaphor I finally came up with for this kind of behavior: A strong brand acts like a statesman, but a weak brand acts like populist.

A statesman isn’t afraid to tell the people what they need to hear, to step above daily politics and do what’s “right”. The populist will say whatever is needed to please the public, often saying multiple things to different constituencies. The statesman is often polarizing, but respected nonetheless and can sometimes rise to become a symbol to a cause (like an iconic brand). The populist, on the other hand, in his attempt to be something for everybody, eventually stands for nothing. And above all, a statesman makes a mark in history, whereas a populist is a shooting star.

Again, this came from Grant. An article on how the president of the US influences American management culture:

This guy just sold quite a product,” said David B. Friend, president and chief executive of Palladium Group, a Boston consulting group specializing in strategy execution. “Obama became the ultimate brand. So if you’re in business, it’s hard to miss what this guy did.”

In the nation’s business schools, training grounds for the next generation of CEOs, students have been paying close attention.

“There’s been effervescence in the air around here as we’ve watched this election,” said Leigh G. Hafrey, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, who described a hunger for a new leadership style. “What happens in the White House has a huge impact on attitudes and practices.”

Full article on the Boston Globe