Our life is spent surrounded by brands of clothing, food, cosmetics. Sociologist Adam Arvidsson believes that brands today have become the subject of a cult. Their value is based on the feelings they evoke in us. Is this good or bad? Expert explanations.
What do brands mean to us today?
Adam Arvidsson: Sociology understands the brand as an ethos, that is, a way of including people in a community that shares a collective experience. Up until the 1950s, stamps only served to distinguish one product from another. They didn’t have a life of their own separate from the product. Then businesses began to take into account the sentiment of consumers — what they think about brands, what associations and behavioral habits they develop from using the product. Thanks to television, Marlboro invented its famous cowboy as the epitome of the lifestyle associated with its cigarettes. In the 1960s, Pepsi and Coca-Cola stopped selling just sugary drinks. They began to sell style.
Brands don’t just sell products. They offer impressions, concentrated experiences
So brands don’t just sell products. They offer impressions, concentrated experiences. Marks are new shrines. The cross of Christ is something more than a piece of wood: it is an object that overshadows the one who looks at it with the holy spirit. Likewise, branded sneakers are more than just badge shoes. When you walk in Reebok or Nike sneakers, you become special too. When you look at a Rolex watch, you see more than just a timepiece.
But it was not always so? Why did this situation arise in our time?
A. A .: The value of a brand has always included how consumers perceive it. The specificity of our time is that marketers can measure and manage this relationship. It started in the 1960s with the advent of marketing research. Companies began to be interested in what people do with their products, what they think about them, how they feel when they use them. The research itself has become a kind of interface through which users communicate what their favorite brand should be.
Supermarkets have expanded interaction with the client, began to arrange cooking courses, promotions and flash mobs, the purpose of which is to make the store the center of social life
There have been other changes as well. The youth took shape in a new autonomous social group. By this time, the emergence of counterculture. This attracted the attention of advertising agencies, who tried to incorporate new trends into brand development strategies. An example is the huge commercial success of jeans, which were originally part of workwear, and today have become a symbol of youth and the spirit of rock and roll.
Later, in the 1980s, marketing services developed new techniques, from coolhunting (hunting for current trends and popular culture ideas) to sponsoring concerts. Supermarkets have expanded interaction with the client, began to arrange cooking classes, promotions and flash mobs, the purpose of which is to make the store the center of social life. The supermarket became not just a source of products, but a whole community. The focus of brand development managers was no longer the product itself, but its image and the lifestyle of which it is a part.
How has the situation changed with the advent of the Internet?
A. A .: The advent of the Internet has expanded the range of opportunities for brands. One of them is viral marketing, or the distribution of visual and audio messages through users. Such actions are often accompanied by comments and discussions of the brand — on forums or social networks. Thus, “user content” is included in the creation of the brand image: comments, blog posts, videos, photos of consumers associated with the brand.
Just like in religions, the emotional charge of brands affects primarily insecure people.
The Italian company Molino Bianco, for example, created a website called Molino You’ll Love, which invited users to share new recipes for sponge cakes. Of course, the creators of the site did not seek to create new products with the help of users (although this was not excluded). Rather, this initiative was to create a sense of belonging to the community, to establish closer ties between the client and the brand.
You use the concept of «ethical capital» in relation to the brand. What do you have in mind?
A. A .: In sociology, there is the concept of social capital, which implies the relationship between social relations and money. In the case of ethical capital, it is about how our experiences with consumption add value to a product. The experiences caused by the brand are taken into account when evaluating it. What is ethical capital? For example, if you are on Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia) and click “Like” on the page of a brand, you demonstrate your commitment to it. The total number of these «social clicks» allows you to evaluate the ethical capital of the brand. There are other methods of evaluation, such as the analysis of texts in social networks that contain a mention of the brand. However, it is almost impossible to accurately measure the amount of ethical capital.
Can brands drive people? For example, it is believed that young people are particularly susceptible to image advertising …
A. A .: I did not accidentally say that brands are like a cult. Just like in religions, the emotional charge of brands affects primarily those people who feel some self-doubt, and this, of course, is true for teenagers. In a general sense, brands attract those social groups that are in transition. These are the people who are trying to break through to the top, to get a higher status. The example of the nouveau riche is very eloquent. Despised social groups are also very sensitive to branding. This can be said of immigrants who may have good jobs but feel that they are not valued because they do not belong to the ethnic majority. Attachment to brands becomes a way to compensate for a weakened social status.
The influence of brands today is strong due to the simplicity of their ideological content. Perhaps communism simply lacked good image advertising?
However, brands are not able to truly control the consumer communities that they themselves have created. Even young people are not easy targets for brand managers: young people are fickle, their tastes change quickly and unpredictably, they can suddenly fall in love with a certain brand and just as suddenly cool off towards it. Take, for example, the virtual game Second Life. It was very popular in 2007-2008, and then it was completely forgotten. Teenagers were the first to enter, but soon they turned their backs on it, and more mature people took their place. The Facebook community (an extremist organization banned in Russia) went the same way: the first wave of users consisted mainly of young people who set up pages for themselves, but today the growth of the platform is already driven to a greater extent by the arrival of people aged 50 and older.
How did brands become part of modern mass culture?
A. A .: In a modern city, one way or another, we find ourselves surrounded by many brands. They look at us from signs, banners, logos on things worn by passers-by and those with whom we come into contact. The brands sponsor concerts, cultural events, educational and charitable projects. It is likely that stamps today occupy a place in our lives comparable to the place of the Church in the Middle Ages. Naomi Klein, in her book No Logo (2012), summed it up perfectly: we live in a branded society. If we lived in 1910, our cultural baggage would be determined by our belonging to the state or people. This feeling, in my opinion, today is much weaker than the feeling of belonging to a particular brand.
Why brands managed to take such an important place in our lives?
A. A .: The paradox is that the influence of brands today is strong due to the simplicity of their ideological content. They do not offer principles for the reorganization of society comparable to ideologies like communism or socialism. The presence of brands in our lives does not rise to the level of ideas that should make our lives better. They operate at the level of our everyday experiences. We wear a certain brand of clothes, we buy furniture from IKEA, we use Apple computers. Stamps become a natural part of our lives. Perhaps communism simply lacked good image advertising?