What's So Evil About Brands?

Before delving into more anti-consumer, anti-corporation rhetoric, I think I may have skipped over an important premise of the counterculture: why, exactly, consumerism is bad. While my previous posts touched on how countercultures criticize the passive acceptance of ubiquitous corporate messages, another important argument of anticonsumerism is that big businesses aren't really selling anything.

It was in the eighties that companies starting shifting focus from producing goods to producing images, according to Naomi Klein, author of No Logo.   It was expensive to take care of factories and people to work inside of the factories, and a lot cheaper to market an image.  Just spend lots of money on an ad team to associate your "products" with a certain lifestyle, wrangle up a licensing agreement to slap your brand on some other company's products, and you're set.  Tommy Hilfiger, for example, is structured entirely through licensing agreements, and manufactures absolutely nothing at all.

Credit: http://www.goodlogo.com/

Granted, some companies do, in fact, produce their own goods.  It's hard to deny that the barista at Starbucks isn't handing you a real, physical latte to drink.  But that's not to say branding isn't the lifeblood of such companies, either.  Places like Starbucks have "integrated the idea of branding into the very fabric of their companies" (Klein).  The coffee powerhouse has strict guidelines dictating company lexicon, how leisurely employees should be working, and won't allow franchising lest some amateur mar the company image. 

It's all about maintaining brand image, and actual product quality is neglected as a result.  In fact, it doesn't really matter what the product is.  It can be clothes, political policy, or a government program.  A successful marketer can brand anything (see "How to Brand Sand" as an example).  The whole point, anticonsumerists acknowledge, is that unaware consumers aren't buying things, they're buying deliberately produced images.  They're buying carefully constructed associations and idealized ways of life.  Our public lives are encroached upon by ever-present business advertisements, and our public lives start to become defined through the particular brands we buy.



Credit: Adbusters



Now, you'll run into those consumers who swear, up and down, that they disregard brands, and happen to popular items (i.e. trendy and expensive items) because they truly are better. One teen, in response to Frontline's Merchants of Cool, explained

I wear Nike shoes. Yes, it is a big huge name brand and there's tons of advertising on it. And I've gone out and I've worn Reeboks or whatever. And honestly, the one pair of Reeboks I ever had fell apart in a month. So to me, I found something that I like, that's comfortable, and that stays in one piece, and so that's why I buy Nike" (What Teens Think).

 

Nevermind that Reebok is considered the alternative to the "huge name brand."  Or that "staying in one piece" appears to be the primary justification for buying Nike shoes.  Obvious flaws aside, this teen is developing a brand loyalty Nike is counting on.  He is not just buying a shoe, but he is buying into the Nike way of life, which is considerable more expensive.