Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

Here’s the second guest lecture I did for the “Brands in Strategic Marketing” course at HSE. A lot of stuff crammed into 45 minutes, but I think I got the message through.

There were a few example videos I used, and here they are, in order of presentation. They’re in the embedded presentation as well, but some folks might want the direct links.

William Shatner’s “Rocketman” performance at the 1978 Science Fiction Movie Awards
Family Guy version of the the Rocketman performance
Coke’s classic “Mean Joe Green ‘Have a Coke and smile’” cultural branding ad
Pepsis’ spoof of Coke’s ad with David Beckham
Jordan Brand XXI ad with kids all over the world doing Michael Jordan impersonations

Nicked this from Rob Walker’s links: The Anti-consumers – Five Groups That Aren’t Buying It. As the title suggests, it’s a list of five distinct groups that really and thoroughly reject consumerism and marketing.

I was half expecting to find on the list some groups of people who say that marketing doesn’t “affect them” and they only buy stuff that they “know” are good brands (you have no idea how often I’ve heard that), but the groups were actually quite serious in their rejection of consumption. If you’re too busy to click on the link, just know this: one of the groups is the Amish, and the other four are equally committed. So yes, I think these five groups are legit in their rejection of consumerism, but let’s come back to the group that I already half identified there: somewhat normal people who swear off marketing and state that it has no impact on them.

For consumers, what they don’t consume is usually an even more powerful identity statement than what they do. So in effect, non-consumers, big brand haters, leftists, hippies, whatever the group may be, usually do have favorite brands and strong emotional ties to them (like anything carrying a Fair Trade logo), but the consumption of these brands is driven by the fact that they are usually the antithesis to some big brands these consumers are actively opposing. Put it this way: they might actively reject McDonald’s’ marketing efforts, yes, but by running away from McDonald’s, the are also running towards brands that stand against everything McDonald’s stands for. Douglas Holt did a wonderful study on anti-consumers like this in his paper “Why do Brands Cause Trouble?” (PDF). I’ve linked to the study before, and it is a must read for any marketer.

This is not a logo… right?

I was talking to my cousin the other day and he recounted a rather interesting example that mirrors this kind of behavior. My cousin is studying philosophy and he had done his bachelor’s thesis on the ethical questions surrounding pharmaceutical companies (to put it short), and he enlightened me on the effects of so-called health advertising. As advertising for pharmaceutical products has boomed and gotten more and more intrusive (especially in the US, think “ask your doctor if you should be taking Tylenol”), so has the amount of people who actively try to reject this kind of pill-based western medicine. These people feel that pharmaceuticals are promoting over-medication and unnatural remedies just for their own profit, and so these people are driven to holistic and eastern medicine, mysticism and consumption of herbal remedies, just to name a few.

But the interesting thing here is that at the same time people are not just trading their previous habits for staying healthy for different ones, they’ve supercharged their personal health care. Where as in the past they might have jogged once a week and eaten a vitamin pill or two every week, now they chug green tea by the gallon, attend yoga classes many times a week and change their diet entirely.

So the message of the pharmaceuticals has sunk hook, line, and sinker: there is something wrong with my health and I need to fix it somehow. It’s just the messenger’s solution they’re not buying. Marketers are nothing if not culture makers, and it’s examples like these that show how far this kind of cultural influence can go.

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?”.

click to download PDF

I uploaded my Master’s Thesis, called A CONCEPT ANALYSIS ON MODERN BRANDING – Defining Key Concepts in Mind-Share, Emotional, Viral, and Cultural Branding, to my server. It’s 124 pages all in all, and it received the grade 80/100 from the Helsinki School of Economics’ marketing department (read: a good grade).

Why should you read the thesis? Well…

• if you think brand managers can totally control their brands, then you need to read this thesis
• if you think consumers are in total control of brands, then you need to read this thesis
• if you want to know what should you take into account when your brand matures and why, then you need to read this thesis
• if you want to understand why advertising constantly keeps losing its power and what you can do about it, then you need to read this thesis
• if you want to know why people driven brands seem to succeed where as more resource-rich and bigger brands are faltering, then you need to read this thesis
• if you’re want to know why forgetting about making money for a while might be the best business decision you’ll ever make, then you need to read this thesis
• if you want to know what Viral Branding REALLY means, and what it means for your business, then you need to read this thesis
• and above all, if you think that a “brand” is just “value added to a product”, then you DEFINITELY need to read this thesis

And as a teaser, here is the main finding of my thesis, communicated as shortly as I possibly can in visual format:

Enjoy, and please give feedback and challenge my ideas, if you dare!