The Invisible Hand of Brand
Culture is the sum of the stories we tell, and branding is the loudest storyteller.
Let me tell you a story.
I grew up in Southern California during the late 80s/early 90s, and as an awkward but aspiring preteen I was really into surf brands—Stüssy, T&C, Billabong, all that rad stuff. I graduated from copying Looney Toons to copying logos and shirt designs. I would horde stickers and graphic tees, and daydream of someday actually learning to surf. There was something magnetic about those brands, something wild that went beyond the artwork — just the right amount of irreverence for a 12-year-old boy.
By painstakingly curating a collage of stickers on my school binder, I, an otherwise painfully shy and rule-obeying kid, felt like there was a part of me that was cool. And cool was everything at that age.
Flash forward almost (gulp) 30 years and as an adult, I’ve created a far more mature sense of self-identity derived from far more meaningful things. I’ve graduated from copying my undergrad professors’ careers to copying my grad school professors’ careers. I’m now a consumer of the best culture — the most talked about TV shows, the most important obscure music, clothing brands with heritage and/or admirably ethical manufacturing practices.
By painstakingly curating a Twitter feed full of intellectuals and up-and-coming comedians, I, an otherwise introverted and rule-obeying adult man, feels like there is a part of me that is cool. And cool is still everything at my age.
If this is dredging up any uncomfortable feelings, not to worry, friend — this isn’t a story about the persistence of childhood insecurities, nor is it about the evils of materialism. Instead, my aim with this project is to examine how we define who we are in relation to the world, in our particular corner of the planet and our particular time in history. More specifically, I want to dig into how we use branding to craft identities and create culture.
The Interplay of Culture and Brands
You may ask: does culture create brands, or do brands create culture? There’s certainly an exchange between the two. Let’s first consider culture. Put plainly, a culture is a unique collection of values, systems, and symbols that a tribe of people has adopted. A simple enough definition, but sometimes identifying the fundamental qualities of one particular culture is a tricky thing to do — it’s very hard to see it while you’re in it, like trying to explain the idea of water to a fish.
One way to examine a culture is to look at what it produces, and one odd byproduct of our industrialized cultures is this thing we call branding: these novel ideas and visuals that we use to differentiate one product from another.
Branding began simply as a way for businesses to communicate to buyers what makes their product special—the least bug-infested flour, the most luxurious fabrics, the most trustworthy banking institution, etc. Little by little, brands have evolved to telling buyers what makes THEM special for buying that product—that the buyer is a cool/smart/charitable/unique individual for choosing this particular product. It’s a sneaky little trick that each of us pretends to be immune to; surely we’re not gullible enough to make purchasing decisions based on trivial emotions, right?
Well, just take a look at your shoes. Does your shoe choice make you feel more athletic? More hip? More high-class? Maybe simply more practical? Regardless of what quality your shoes make you feel, they make you feel MORE of a particular quality than another shoe choice would, and thus more part of one tribe than another. In a nutshell, that’s branding.
So which qualities does a company choose to convey in their branding? That’s easy: they choose the qualities that will get the job done. The pick the qualities that already resonate with their customers. They say the things and tell the stories that they know people will like. Companies construct brands using the stuff of culture.
Branding as a Lens on Culture
Remember that I said it’s hard to define culture? Actually, in order to examine our culture, look no further than the branded stories that surround us 24/7 on billboards and TV commercials and Facebook ads. Branding is like a rich cross-section of culture that reveals the values we hold, who we think we should like and dislike, how we define a good life, and on and on.
And because of these branded product stories, those elusive qualities of a culture that are otherwise hard to define are displayed 24/7 on billboards and TV commercials and Facebook ads. Our consumerist society is one incessant echo chamber of culture, constantly retelling the same stories about the values we hold, who we should like and dislike, what is a good life, and on and on.
Just a friendly reminder: this is not a critique of materialism or capitalism. Instead, our noisy, branding-obsessed society offers an opportunity to step outside ourselves and observe the underpinnings and nuances of our culture from a more objective viewpoint. The phenomenon of branding then functions as a mirror or, better yet, two mirrors held deftly opposite each other so we can see the weird bumps on the back of our head.
Put another way, branding is the apex of a cultural feedback loop, surfacing our mythologies and then feeding them back into the culture. But branding is not a passive actor in that cycle; those stories are altered, rearranged, remixed, all in the name of selling product. Branding then evolves culture, changes it one subtlety to the next, always leaning the masses this way or that.
Who’s Driving This Thing?
If branding shapes culture and culture shapes our perception of the world, then branding is a powerful tool, indeed. The alarming realization here is that the world of branding does not answer to some cultural high tribunal, never adhering to some grand social design with humanist aims. Each ad campaign, each season of must-see-TV, each sneaker drop…they all move us in a different direction, one degree at a time.
As authors of these brand messages, are we asking ourselves if the direction we’re moving the culture is a good direction? As democratic consumers who cast votes with our purchases, are we conscious of the cultural values and stories we’re endorsing?
To me, this is why branding matters: if culture is the sum total of the stories we tell ourselves about good and bad, who is “us” and who is “other,” then branding is a chance to intercept those stories and examine them before releasing them back into the wild. These branded stories make us happy or make us miserable, excite us to love or to hate, unify us or divide us, cultivate community or lead us to war. Culture is powerful, but that power is not its own—we may be heirs of the culture we’re born into, but we are authors of the culture we pass on.
So let’s tell the right stories.
