Branding and personal image are parallel concepts. Both are about communicating an essence, a lifestyle, a choice, or an identity. When you peel back the layers of the onion a bit, branding is a bit more surreptitious-- it communicates a goal or agenda.
Not that this is a bad thing. The paranoid, anti-government, anti-globalization, anti-everything types are likely to be thinking 'Agenda. Ooh. Ooh this is bad. Let's go to the grocery store and buy ten years worth of canned goods and stock up on ammo.'
Wait, maybe I'm confusing the paranoid people out there with the Sons of Liberty. My bad.
As usual, dear reader, I digress. Pardon me while I steer the conversation away from American gun nuts and back to branding.
Yes, brands are a method of communicating a goal or agenda. No, that's not a bad thing. At least, not if you understand the concepts behind what a brand is.
At its core, a brand is a communication tool. If you pay attention to advertising which paints a picture of a lifestyle associated with a certain product, then do it with the understanding that the company is communicating their intent to sell you a product, if you identify with the message (read: brand) that they have created.
Let's say that Company A sells widgets. By definition, widgets are a completely useless product that are entirely fictitious and serve little purpose. Kind of like everything with the 'As Seen on TV' sticker slapped on it. Company A embarks upon a marketing campaign that features music by Moby, endorsements by U2 and various once-upon-a-time-talk-of-the-town sports figures. The purpose of this campaign is to align Company A's widgets with the perceptive lifestyle of middle-aged, midlife crisis men who have stacks of cash to blow through (perhaps not the best strategy during a recession, but I digress).
Every major company has (or should have- I've consulted for quite a few that were in a hopeless muddle) a well-defined brand strategy. To survive and prosper in the modern business climate, branding is an essential layer of an organization's overall communications strategy. Railing against the labels, advertising, and brand culture of the mass-market is somewhat like smacking yourself in the face with a fresh-from-the-sea salmon in order to encourage the fish to transform itself into sushi.
One thing is for certain- love, hate, or apathize, a little knowledge will go a long towards functioning more harmoniously in our consumer-oriented society. Unless of course, dear reader, you want to hit up the gun shop, stake out a piece of land and start your own society. In that case, all my best. I'm staying here. I like my BlackBerry, Coppley, Jack Daniels, and dreams of Audi far too much to wander off into the dark woodlands.
