Micro-thought: It’s a branding issue (competitive branding became a necessity of the machine age)
“Competitive branding became a necessity of the machine age — within a context of manufactured sameness; image-based difference had to be manufactured along with the product. — Naomi Klein — No Logo”
Naomi Klein in her famous text No Logo had pointed out that in the machine age, where manufactured sameness was the norm, the concept of branding was a must. This reliance on brands, which have become co-mingled with uniforms as a sign of authority has left us with an interesting tool to examine some of the social disruptions we have seen in 2020.
It would be hard to miss the current uproar over the federal police deployment that happened in Portland for example. The legality debates we will leave to others better equipped to examine the nuances. What we are interested in the public perception of the officers, the choice of language used when describing the situation, and most important of all the aesthetics of the deployment.
Is Portland if nothing else a branding issue?
The medium is the message
Marshall McLuhan is famous for the phrase — typos aside — the medium is the message.
In essence, what he means by this phrase is that the mechanism by which an idea is conveyed is just as important if not more so than the idea itself.
So let’s look at the situation in Portland through this lens.
Federal police officers from CBP were deployed in order to conduct targeted arrests. We can assume their purpose (or conveyed purpose) being to specifically target individuals accused of damaging federal property or attacking federal employees. Jurisdictional issues aside this seems to be the basic narrative from the authorities on why they have been deployed to the city.
Agents from the Border Patrol’s elite unit known as Bortac typically track smugglers, serve high-risk warrants and raid stash houses. For much of the past month, they have been working on the streets of Portland. — The Wall Street Journal
The public backlash has come from three angles. The first is the question of if the Federal agents overstepping their jurisdiction. Second, the level of violence leveled. The third, from the fact these officers appear to move around in unmarked vehicles and wear uniforms that lack insignia identifying the officer number and agency. The press narrative is these officers are operating like secret police from a Junta run regime. It’s the type of presentation in the media you might expect from the pages of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.
If the most committed opponents of the corporatist economic model are systematically eliminated, whether in Argentina in the seventies or in Iraq today, that suppression is explained as part of the dirty fight against Communism — Naomi Klein — The Shock Doctine
The heart of this issue, we argue is branding. The public perceives that LEO should wear their badge number and the agency's uniforms should have the name emblazoned in large letters - essentially the public expects logos. Additionally while not completely rare the perception is generally that officers wear blues and blacks and maybe greens rather than combat fatigues.
In a world where police agencies have proliferated in the wake of 9/11 like cheap Chinese knockoffs, branding has become everything.
To quote the Police1 website:
“To create greater community engagement, increase retention and improve recruitment, every police agency should develop and capitalize on their own brand” — Police1 — Why your police department needs a brand
Our societies are driven by aesthetics presented in streamed shows, games, and digital media. The public’s perception of the police is modeled by this, by the spectacle if you will. Police departments have been forced to get into the act. To quote Lieutenant W. Michael Phibbs:
“To create trust, be meaningful to communities and avoid the perception of being an occupying force, law enforcement agencies must understand the impact of branding. Like it or not, all agencies carry a brand. For it to be a positive one and work as a force multiplier, it needs to have a strategy for implementation. Agencies that control and strategically shape their brands successfully enhance their value proposition for the betterment of employees, businesses and communities they serve.” — Lieutenant W. Michael Phibbs, Police1
If the medium is the message then deployment of CPB in fatigues certainly sends a certain message, but is it deliberate or accidental. Are those deploying CBP agents aware that the branding, that being the choice, colors, patterns, and logos of the uniform, may be contributing to the perception of the secret police? Maybe they are? Maybe they want that?
The photos we’ve seen generally show the uniforms of CBP agents say Police and are affixed on the top right shoulder with the badge of the department. Although in some cases this has been difficult to read. The vehicles are unmarked, likely to aid in the ability of officers to move undetected when targeting individuals.
So had CBP worn blue and black uniforms, with large lettering, badge numbers, and marked vehicles, would the narrative have been different?
Would there have even been one? What would Hubertus Bigend think?
