This is the opening “address” I presented at the 8th Annual Packaging and Brand Design conference organized by the Institute for International Research held in New York City on June 22, 2004.
How much money do you make? Have you ever contemplated suicide? Have you ever taken an anti-depressant? Have you ever bounced a check? Have you ever taken a pill to enhance your sexual performance? Have you ever had sex on a cellphone? On a computer? Yes? No? Why? Why not?
You may not believe this, but in 1967—yes 1967—a year when many people in this room were not even born, Marshall McLuhan described a culture of universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and society’s need to know. The traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions are no longer private and here’s the real catch—they are no longer erasable. Welcome to the 21st century and our new, google-ized world. We have reached a point where our personal histories…when we go to the bank, when we pay a toll to go over a bridge, when we buy Pepperidge Farm cookies or Dial soap or Kraft Macaroni & Cheese or Thermasilk shampoo, when we charge a hotel room or rent a car…all of this is permanently recorded and identifiable. What are the ramifications of this new common, available knowledge, now that we have become so involved with each other, now that all of us have become the unwitting result of technological advancement?
According to McLuhan, one of the results of this open-network of information and revelation is that our character is no longer simply shaped by our families. The whirlpool of information fathered by this new techno-society far surpasses the influence that our moms and dads used to bring to bear. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are living in sensory overload: we determine our beauty factor by comparing ourselves to airbrushed super-models and surgically enhanced celebrities, our intelligence by answering questions correctly on Jeopardy, our fear factor by considering whether or not to be covered in maggots while we eat rat feces, our sports acumen by watching and worshipping steroid pumped ear biters, gamblers and murderers, our bravery by war-obsessed leaders, and our leadership by sex-obsessed presidents.
It is a really perplexing time in our little corner of the universe. This lack of personal privacy and mass consumption of information has changed the way we relate, perceive and live. While we may be lucky in that we can google “American presidents” and in .6 seconds get 1,890,000 results, we can also google “xanax” and find 760 places to buy this pharmaceutical illegally. Ultimately access to information becomes both a privilege and a responsibility. I am not sure we quite get this yet.
“Hmmmm,” you may be saying. How does this have anything to do with packaging? Why is this being talked about at a conference about brand design? The answer is actually relatively easy. Packaging and brand design is not just about design anymore. There is no more “mass market” in which to target a product. There is no one demographic picture of the planet. I saw Grant McCracken speak two weeks ago, and he discussed how while lifestyle typologies expanded to first 3, then 6, then 9 and then 12 typologies—there is now too much variation and we have reached categorical exhaustion.
As a result, I have come to believe that the term brand design ultimately undermines the job we do as brand consultants, marketers, designers and strategists. Brand design is not only about design. It is the perfect, meticulously crafted balance of cultural anthropology, psychology, marketing and creativity. It is about cultural anthropology because what we do in our culture—whether it is an obsession with reality television or weapons of mass destruction, this has a major impact on the brands around us. It is about psychology because if we don’t fundamentally understand the brain circuitry of our audience and really know what they are thinking—and why they are thinking it!—we will not be able to solicit their imagination. It is about marketing because understanding the marketplace and the messaging impacts and influences perception. It is about creativity because if we don’t create a pretty package, then consumers won’t notice it and buy it. Yeah, right. What is the lead gene in this equation?
Rather than call it brand design, I believe is it more about brand composition. Brands are so persuasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, and unaltered. Any knowledge of culture is impossible now without an understanding of the implications of “brand.” We have entered a day and age where brand is an extension of human facility, whether it be psychic or psychological. Print technology created the public. Electric technology created the mass. Computer technology created globalization. And now brand technology creates culture. Our culture has gotten to a place in our collective history where it is almost entirely composed of brands. Everything we consume—even the most basic commodities like water and salt—are brands. Experiences are brands. People are brands. Our role models are people, and thus our role models have become brands. It is circular, it is insidious and it isn’t going to stop. The more information we have—the more access to information we have, the more capacity we will have to particpate in the composition of our human experiences. And for every human experience there will now be a corresponding brand.
No-logo-ers like Naomi Klein think this isn’t so good. Pro-logo-ers like Wally Olins is fine with it. I think they are both missing the eye of the hurricane in this debate. Whether it is good or bad is really just an attempt to understand the condition and judge it. Determining whether is it good or bad is not going to stop or encourage it in any way. I believe that the full ramification of this type of cultural evolution is yet to be fully understood. We are enveloped by brands. They form a seamless web around us. What are the ramifications of this totally branded society? Branded relationships? Branded sexuality? What are the ramifications of a branded government? Brands are now just about anything you can get away with.
Brands, by changing the culture in which we participate, evoke a unique composition of sensory perceptions. The extension of any one of these sensory perceptions alters the way we think and act—and the way we perceive the world. When these perceptions change, people change. I contend that brand composition has more impact on our culture than any other medium.
And guess what? We are the composers, the arbiters, the instigators of that medium. It is our practices that are now creating the perception of the world we live in. But as Montaigne said, “The thing of it is, we must live with the living.” And living in our future—from this view anyway, seems dangerous. Perhaps, as A.H. Whitehead said, “it is the business of the future to be dangerous.” But as we sit on the precipice of a branded universe, I ask us all, I ask myself, to be careful. As we compose our branded stories, as we weave our myths and hope and dreams into our brands, as we project our fantasies and lusts, needs and demands into our brands, let’s remember our frailty and strengths and foibles and failings. Let’s remember our humanity. And let’s try and be careful. Please. Be careful.
Goddamn!
Debbie for President 2004
On Jun.24.2004 at 08:44 AM