While some economists are becoming worried about the validity of future economic growth, branding experts are seeing the dawn of a wonderful new world in which companies will be able to manipulate culture as well as products. Well, I think they're in for a great disappointment. Have they not been paying attention to what happened in the latter half of the last century (and the failed arguments being put foprward by economists such as Galbraith)? This is, that despite the magnificent efforts of the advertising industry, the customer is ultimately king even though he may be credulous for a while. The low profit margins of all our basic consumer goods is the result. The Big Three American car firms are all poised on the edge of bankruptcy -- as are some of their Asian competitors.
The current acceleration in branding is but a substitute for the paucity of genuinely new consumer products. So, at the present time, while the trend-setters like to be seen to show their status by taking their coffee very expensively in Starbucks (or the 'lower classes' eating big Macs or buying Manchester United kit for their children), all these will pass all too soon and some other gimmicks will come along and replace them. Just as middle-class customers only have a limited amount of time or energy to spend on generic consumer products, so they only have a limited amount of time to spend on associating themselves with this brand or that. Brands are becoming increasingly ephemeral -- just as there are only a limited number of fashionable restaurants in middle-class cities like Bath or London at any one time -- literally a moving feast!
Well, they can think on, and be brave. But there's no new economic world dawning, at least not on present premisses. The professional middle-class -- that is, those who have not spent their credit cards to the hilt and well beyond, as most customers have -- are already choc-a-bloc with impediments. They have too little spare time and too little spare energy. They are already spending too much time on commuting and longer working weeks. Yes, they'll partake of a limited number of the latest branded gimmicks as they arise for a quick fix of confirmatory status, they'll choose more expensive resorts and tours in their increasingly shorter annual holidays, they'll buy the latest electronic goods to replace the ones they already have or the latest more expensive versions of the car, such as SUVs, but they're not going to set off the powerful waves of investments that characterised the last century with one new stratum good after the other that chased customers downwards until they reached almost everybody.
The following is an interview with Andrew Zolli, formerly of brand consulting firm, Siegelgale, by American Instititue of Graphic Arts magazine. He is currently writing on a book about branding, In Good Company. He would be advised to pay far more attention to the customer and what their basic needs really are than to the precise design of products that have somehow got to keep the economic machine going.
Thanks to Arthur Cordell for bringing the following to our attention
Keith Hudson
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ON BRANDOLOGY AND FUTURES RESEARCH
A.I.G.A.: What is In Good Company about, and why are you writing it?
ZOLLI: It's a book about companies and their relationship to culture. In the last year, I've had a chance to interview dozens of communications professionals, senior business leaders, social scientists, anthropologists, cultural critics, artists, and the consensus opinion is that something very deep has changed, and its not just about the Internet. People's relationships to brands are changing.
The promise-driven world that was unlocked at the beginning of the century has caught up with companies that made those promises at the tail-end of the 20th century. We're in a world now where companies are increasingly in the business of making culture as well as products. Where people use brands to construct their personal and social identities. Where the meaning of brands is appropriated and regurgitated, redistributed reconstituted, reconstructed, represented in a kind of semiotic back and forth that is so complicated that we need new sciences like complexity science and semiotics to make sense of whats actually going on.
With the ascendancy of the market as the central institution of peoples lives, companies have become cultural engines more than ever before. But they are not structured, measured, or rewarded by how well they shepherd new meaning.
A.I.G.A.: What have you learned from your primary research for In Good Company?
ZOLLI: One of the first things I did when I started researching this book was that I interviewed 400 people about their attitudes towards brands. I did 20 people in each borough of New York; were talking about person on the street kind of interviews. There are some fascinating trends, which emerged out of this conversation, which is not statistically accurate, but interesting nonetheless.
For example, in urban environments were there is great plentitude of choice, you get very interesting perspective on brands. Ask 100 people in Park Slope, Brooklyn or SoHo or South of Market in San Francisco to talk to you about their attitudes towards McDonalds, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, The Gap -- these paragon brands in American culture, the ones that are held up as being truly the companies to emulate. You'll find people saying, I don't like Nikes labor practices; they use sweatshops, or I don't like the way The Gap homogenizes culture and makes everybody look the same, or I don't like the way McDonalds is the only choice on Rt.95, so when I drive from here to Boston I can only get a Big Mac.These companies have been so successful that they've narrowed the choices available in the markets where they compete, and in the process they've reduced the cherished distinctiveness of neighborhoods and regions.
But these kind of responses are paradoxical. First of all, the folks complaining are the ones that have the greatest access to alternatives. They're the consumers who are most likely to register the perceived threat of the advent of Starbucks in their neighborhood to knock out two or three independent coffee houses, which assumes that they have two or three coffee houses to put out of business. The other thing that is paradoxical about this is that people will rant about certain brands, even as they are patronizing them. I have had people tell me that they hate McDonalds while they're eating a Big Mac there is a real disconnect between attitudes and behavior. People say, I hate the McDonaldization of the world. But I like the fries.
On the other hand, in many of the places where you would expect there to be far reduced choice, like in rural regions, the advent of these mass market brands is seen as a great social good. Even in towns where Wal-Mart is putting local retailers out of business, people are thankful for Wal-Mart or Target. They're thankful for a breadth of goods, quality of goods, consistency of goods, and prices.
American Institute of Graphic Arts -- 6 March 2003
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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