Brands and mass culture

  • The role of brands
    • Branding identifies the producers of goods, services and media messages that surround us
    • Through marketing & everyday experience, these brands become familiar to the public
    • Brands become icons and can represent socio-economic characteristics
  • Origins of brand culture
    • Prior to mid-1800s
      • Goods were generic -- without patent or trademark
      • Goods were produced by manufacturer, stocked by wholesalers and sold by retailers
      • No identifiable difference of manufacturer -- each were roughly equivalent and consumers did not have direct choice
    • Example of early brand: Levi Strauss
      • Originally a wholesaler
      • Tailor approached company with the idea of using rivets for durability, went into business with patents
      • Levi's became a branded product, distinct from generic denim jeans
    • Patent medicines
      • Introduced following Civil War as trademarked products, early example of advertising
      • Largely based on alcohol, narcotics--opiates and cocaine--and other harmful products
        • Stanley's Snake Oil found to contain turpentine (an irritant to mammals)
        • The narcotic quality did result in brief pain relief
      • Advertised using brand names or trademarks (that usually featured an individual) and promised cures to various illnesses
        • Example: Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound
          • Pinkham considered America's first successful businesswoman
          • Her compound was introduced 1876 & promised relief from menstral and menopausal pain
          • Initially stove-made till success allowed move to factory
          • Marketed in print advertisements that encouraged women to write to Pinkham
          • Pinkham has been noted for her effective communications (from writing ad copy and personal letters), her introduction of feminine health issues to the public
          • Package, advertisments: #1, #2
          • Pinkham in song
      • Trademarked patent medicines allowed consumers to select by name, not general product
        • Consumers requested specific product from retailer, who ordered from wholesaler
      • Went unregulated till muckraked in early 1900s
        • Despite revenue from the $100 million industry, magazines began to reject advertisements (Ladies' Home Journal, the first)
        • Muckrakers -- specifically Adams' and his "The Great American Fraud" (1905) -- uncovered the unhealthy nature of patent medicine
        • Investigations led to Pure Food and Drug Act
      • Some contemporary brands began as patent medicines but either relinquished the medicinal claim or changed ingredients
        • Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, 7-Up, Bayer, Smith Brothers cough drops, Vicks
  • Contemporary brand culture
    • Globalized
    • Mass customized
      • Allowed by global marketplace & modern technology
      • Larger market for both labor and goods
      • Greater product variety, higher turnover, better managed inventories
    • Criticized
      • As brands has become part of consciousness, scholars and others have examined the impact these have
      • Some common criticisms:
        • Protrayal of groups
        • Business practices
        • Cultural hegemony
  • Examples
    • Brand icon: Tommy Hilfiger (1990s)
      • Attempts to capture larger portions of mass market while maintaining unique brand
      • Successful: 1992 purchased, by 1995 some investors sold shares for $50 million
    • Why iconic? Advertising, celebrity association
      • Worn by Don Nelson (NBA coach), Michael Jackson, TLC (female group), advertisements with Tori Amos and Phil Collins
      • African-American association: Hilfiger sees Grand Puba in JFK wearing TH clothes, invites him on shopping spree
      • Strategy: To have "hipness" of hip-hop culture associated with TH brand
      • Loose association -- free clothing to rappers, free exposure to brand
      • Leads to stronger association: Snoop Dogg wearing Tommy at SNL in 1994
      • Criticism: "Y'all are nothing by Tommy's wench"
    • Why iconic? American flag colors and association
      • Ads: "the real american fragrance" (see right), "a declaration of independence"
      • Critics contend that this American identity masks the global nature of the business, whether thru manufacturing or reach generally
  • Barbie & Mattel
    • Launched in 1959, after Ruth Handler watched daughter play with dolls, giving adult identities
      • Based on German adult doll
      • At launch, most dolls were infant aged
      • Marketed as a teenaged fashion model, 350,000 sold in first year
      • Barbie has pets, a boyfriend, cars and careers (as pilot, flight attendant, etc)
    • Controversies
      • Body image issues
      • Provocations of violence
        • 2005 research found school girls, aged 7-11, often mutilated their dolls
          • Decapitation, burning, breaking, microwaving
          • According to researchers, these were reactions to Barbie being feminine icon, "plastic", reminder of early childhood
          • Children found to be more engaged with celebrities than toys
      • International reactions
      • Marketing
        • "Oreo School Time Fun Barbie" (2001)
      • Pricing
  • Online revolt
    • Branding leads to negative feedback, as seen in "Merchants of Cool"
    • With the Web, individual feedback is provided a mass audience and an anti-brand subculture is easily established
    • URL criticism: The "sucks" sites
      • Established by Dan Parisi, who owned whitehouse.com for seven years until selling it in 2004
      • Parisi registered 700 domain names with "sucks" in the URL by 2001, including many brands, individuals and other institutions
        • microsoftsucks.com, jenniferlopezsucks.com, chinasucks.com
      • Companies have claimed intellectual property in trademark and have won cases
        • By 2001, Guinness beer won the removal of guinness-really-really-sucks.com and guinessbeerreallyreallysucks.com
        • Decided by the World Intellectual Property Organization
    • Graphic-based criticism
      • Image-editing software permits criticism sans URL
      • At right, criticisms of major American car and Web/software companies are displayed on sites not owned by the image creator
  • Trademark -- (™) protects names, logos, symbols, image and/or designs as a type of intellectual property

American music confluences (con't)

  • Jim Crow laws
    • Maintained "separate but equal" provision from 1876-1965
    • During this period, music established by different races sometimes converged -- and eventually resulted in rock 'n' roll
  • Forms
    • Country music ("white man's blues"), folk, bluegrass
    • Jazz, blues -- influenced form, encouraged improvisation
    • Gospel --shaped vocal stylings, including call and response
  • Distribution
    • Radio & "race"/"hillbilly" records
  • The Great Migration
    • Migration of Southern blacks to northern urban areas from 1910-1930
      • 500,000 from the South to Chicago alone, followed rail routes
    • Figures and institutions
      • Chicago Blues musicians: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley, Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson, etc.
      • Labels: Chess, Alligator

Class material

Dr. Towns Label

snake oil

Dr. Towns', Clark Stanley's and Lydia Pinkham's: Examples of early branding in the United States.

 

Tommy Hilfiger

A Tommy Hilfiger magazine advertisement from the 1990s: An incorporated American imagery and a hip-hop identity.

 

University of Wisconsin and Washburn University have had trademark fights during the past twenty years.

 

Brand parody

The Web has allowed for mass distribution of brand mockery, in this case following the auto industry bailout in January 2009.

 

microsoft criticism

This modification of The Scream (1893) served as criticism to the proposed Yahoo!-Microsoft merger of 2008

Matthew Blake, CSU-Chico Department of Journalism