Branding Doesn't Work. So Now What?
Douglas Rushkoff,
Ooyala,
Jan 14, 2011
Douglas Rushkoff: "Mass marketing - branding - was created in order to simulate the human connection we used to have with the people with whom we used to have peer to peer interactions." It is the outgrowth of two centralizing inventions that characterized the industrial: common currency, which requires that people work through banks, and the chartered corporation, which was granted the right to certain types of production. So instead of working and accumulating wealth themselves, people worked for corporations and accumulated wealth in banks. Mass media, in turn, was created in order to support mass branding. And in time we came to value those images more than other people. But then we got the net, which reinstates the possibility of peer to peer interaction. And we're talking with each other about what we, as a society, are going to become. And brands don't have any place in that conversation. Because peer-to-peer conversations tend to be about facts, and branding is about myths. People don't talk about the 'Keebler Elves', the myth that was substituted in place of a cookie factory; they talk about how cookies are made, who makes them, whether they're organic, etc. Rushkoff is right on; don't miss this half hour video.
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