Monday 26 March 2012

Who controls the bands?


Who controls the Brands?

This essay will discuss weather it is we as consumers who control the brands or the corporate identities themselves.
In today’s western society we see a civilization overwhelmed with branding, corporate giants cover every aspect of life. Before these giants began to dominate the world, brands once represented a standard for a product, i.e. quality, quantity and price, giving a constant for the consumer. Today to brand a product is different; it isn’t just supplying standards it’s creating an over all image for the brand.
So how does a brand image come into life, what considerations do corporate companies take into account when creating their appearance; fundamentally it is whatever the market wants weather its fast food companies using organic products to Ethical fashion brands, and we as customers control the market therefore we control the brand, or a successful brand anyway.

“All successful businesses are made up of three strands: technical or craft skills, financial know how, and the ability to sell (call it seduction, although its more usually called marketing)”­­1

The first of the three, technical brands are usually dedicated to what they do, their image is based primarily around their products, focusing mainly on improving what’s already there, exploring every possibility to create the next best thing, unlike financial based businesses who’s products are generally second best to maximising profitability, this strand usually falls into banks and management consultants.
Although most businesses apply all these strands, Marketing or seduction as Olins refers to it, is seen to be the most successful strand, we see this every day walking down the street, watching TV and using the Internet, advertisements are all around us persuading and manipulating us into believing that a brand will add a little more definition to the idea of ourselves, and it works, the majority of western society is covered from head to toe in brands, from excessively priced iPhones helping the consumer feel superior to all other mobile users to a healthy selection from the McDonalds menu, nothing of which Is remotely healthy at all but still connotes the idea of an incredibly tasty meal.
Olins underlines that one of the main principles of creating and sustaining a ‘successful brand’ is trust, a brand that can take every thing its stands for and support the business on those principles gives it consistency and something for the consumer believe in. He states a brand usually consists of the ‘four senses’ in which he believes cover the basics of what a brand has to offer, product, environment, communication and behaviour.


1 – Olins, w., 2003, On Brand
2 – Olins, w., 2003, On Brand

“The product is what the organization makes or sells. The Environment is where it makes or sells it. Communication is how it tells people, every audience, about itself and what its doing. And behaviour’s how it behaves and of course that means how every single person works inside the brand comports himself or herself in any interaction of any kind with any other individual or organization.”2

So if the seducers are rising to the top of the brand world with All these senses incorporated into their projected image, the product, Environment, communication and behaviour, where is this projected image emerging from, it seems in more recent time some of the world largest brands have undergone huge changes to all of these senses in order to gain consumer respect, if as consumers we believe a brand is unethical we have the power to destroy it, “we like brands. If we didn’t like them we wouldn’t buy them, its us as consumers who decide which brand will succeed and which will fail”. (Olins, 2003, on brand)
One might argue that in today’s world, we have in fact already been dominated into a sense of need for these brands in our lives due to marketing and advertising.
Where Olins argues in some cases it is us, the consumers in control, Naomi Klein takes a different perspective, Klein feels as though we are in a downhill spiral with brands taking over globally, that we are being bombarded left and right and eventually will be so overwhelmed with advertising and branding, we will no longer make our own decisions.

‘That we live sponsored life is now a truism and it’s a pretty safe bet that as spending on advertising continues to rise, we roaches will be treated to even more of these ingenious gimmicks, making it ever more difficult and more seemingly pointless to muster even and ounce of outrage.”­3

Essentially we as a society seem to already be in that position, branding is progressively breaking down our ability to make decisions about our projected image, whilst at the same time supplying us with brands to better associate ourselves with. The fact that large corporate identities establish emotional ties with consumers show they are taking over, rather than annoyingly flashing advertisements as often as possible they push these emotional triggers upon us which sometimes cancel out the advertisement leaving but a subtle but constant feeling of need for their product behind.
Take western societies largest corporate fast food restaurant, McDonalds, a few years ago we saw them as the golden arches a brand for everybody no matter your age, size or ethnicity, a loyal global brand who stand by their customers and respect their opinions.
 “Instead of a binary "true or false" equation, these emotional slices of life were hard to argue against and easy to embrace.”4
McDonald’s can be seen as one of the most manipulative brands around today, back at the beginning they were one of the few brands that understood what Branding was all about, they knew their product wasn’t a huge selling point they didn’t supply a beautifully presented 3 course meal in a room surrounded with a wonderful ambience, nor did they promote this, they focused mainly on the seduction side and began to promote an experience thus creating an image for their brand, McDonalds did this much more than most brands, they set out to reach out to every target audience in the market using deep emotional connections the every consumer could and would relate to.
3 – Klein, N. 2010, No Logo.
4 – Olins, w., 2003, On Brand.

Throughout history McDonalds have never backed down with this approach, going as far as using simple psychological techniques such as colour theory, where vibrant colours of red can arouse the feeling of hunger and a bold use of yellow known to arouse feelings of cheerfulness, also widely associated with food, it’s this seductive approach that have kept McDonalds alive. From year to year we find advertisements of theirs reaching out to more and more consumers, increasingly generating a wider consumer market, this advertisement below is a perfect example of how far McDonalds have expanded their target audience, they address each individual subtly throughout the video, using very personal comments a lot of consumers will relate too, then finish with ‘were just passing by’, connoting McDonalds is an easy snack to grab no matter where or who you are thus making you feel the need to grab,  these are the emotional connections both Olins and Klein mention throughout their writing.
With McDonalds sustaining this global consumer market making billions every year does this show they are in fact in control of their consumers, more recent changes argue other wise.
 “If Customers believe that antisocial behaviour merits a boycott then they will find that companies soon get the message and behave themselves” (Olins, 2003, On Brand)
As Olin’s reiterates throughout, this brand identity McDonalds are try to sustain and maintain may only be done by complying to the needs of the consumer, meaning if brand’s such as McDonald’s wants to keep their global market they must Adhere to the consumer needs.
“Many great brands are like amoebae or plasticine. They can be shaped, twisted and turned into all sorts of ways yet still be recognizable.” (Olins, 2003, On Brand)
Due to constant attack for unhealthy food and a bad ‘fast food’ reputation Declining sales during the start of the new millennium saw McDonald franchises closing for the first time in history, which triggered a huge rethink of the image McDonald’s portrayed, they needed to consider ethical and eco friendly practices. Over the last year or so, we have seen one of the biggest changes to a global brand in history from a fast / junk food king to a healthy food option, an alleged 1 billion dollars was spent in order to refine their image and boost sales, they did this by revisiting the ‘environment’ as Olin’s refers to it as a ‘brand experience’ (Olins, 2003, On Brand)
Due to constant attack for unhealthy food and a bad ‘fast food’ reputation McDonalds decided to try to refresh their image, keeping the well recognizable golden arches they simply made the yellow more golden for a warmer welcoming effect and swapped the hard red for a terra cotta colour, again a warmer smoother look. As well as changing the colours they decided to incorporate a new colour, ‘olive and sage green’ a completely new colour for them and very out of the ordinary. It is clear from this the food chain are trying to build a more hopeful healthier brand in order to rid themselves of any bad reputation. They also redesigned one of the more important aspects of a brand, the environment, every restaurant in the UK is being re-vamped in order to contain a healthier and more eco friendly environment, replacing the plastic chairs and surfaces the company used, with brick walls and wooden seating.
The use of wood inside and outside gives the restaurant a overall natural feel, connotes that they are using more natural resources for their environment but also along with the use of olive green and sage denotes that as a brand they have undergone an overall change in which every thing they do has become more organic, natural and therefore appealing to the consumer. So it seem they want to appeal to the customers needs, although they do it slowly what the majority consumer wants, the majority consumer gets.








Over all as a society we have developed an almost unchangeable relationship between us as the consumer and brands, as stated by Olin’s they cover every thing we love in life, they are there first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but just who controls them, essentially it is us, although brands may manipulate us into thinking we need this way of life, we still have the choice of free will, we can still walk away and choose not to purchase these products, the brands change in order to please the people. “We like brands, if we didn’t like them we wouldn’t buy the. It is we as consumers who decide which brand will succeed and which will fail.” (Olins, 2003, On Brand)
5 – Wally Olins – On Brand

Bibliography

Book
Olins, W (2003). On Brand. London: Thames & Hudson.
Olins, W (2008). The Brand Handbook: Thames & Hudson.
Klein, N (2010). No Logo, London: Fourth Estate.
Favre, J-P (?). Colour and communication: Zurich:ABC editions
Foot, P (2002). Theories of Ethics: Oxford University Press.
Davies, M (2009). The Fundamentals of Branding: AVA Publishing.
Web

Sunday 25 March 2012

Seminar 1 Panopticism.


Seminar 1
Panopticism

What did we take away from the lecture?
-       The way in which society makes us conform an behave in the way the government and society wants us to behave, shifting from physical to mental control.
-       The way that you are controlled makes you a more productive member of society.
Jeremy Bentham – The Panopticon  (1791)
An institution/System (not to be thought as a building or prison but a system)
-       Cant see who’s watching you
-       Cant see other inmates
-       Power should be visible but never verifiable
-       Inmates constantly illuminated
-       A Laboratory
Power is better thought as a relationship.
Power comes if somebody allows his or her power to be taken away.
Women are sex objects of men, as much because women willingly let themselves become sex objects of men.
Bosses have as much power over workers as long as the workers let the boss take that power.
Richard has power over us, but only because we agree to take notes and follow his lecture. But it’s actually the constitution that has to power. I.e. Supervising the Supervisor.
Self-regulating / controlling yourself.
Panopticism is when you create the power over yourself due to things made by the power holder.
Facebook is very panoptic having to keep us a social E identity.
Twitter is worse having people following you finding out where you are, but at the same time you want these people to follow you.
Turning everyone into a ‘Docile Body’.



Task

Write 300 words analysis of something panoptic in our world.
-       Quotes used throughout, weaving them in fragments of sentences.
-       ‘CCTV is an example of permanent registration’.

Hyperreality.


A hyper reality is used to describe ones inability to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, this issue has been brought about more so due to advances in technology in today's societies.
Our generation have witnessed the online community expand throughout the world in an unbelievable way, taking the gaming industry to another level, with people of all ages, genders and races taking part of this hyper reality. It truly is the most daunting case of hyper reality in today’s society, Call of Duty being a main supplier, a game in which you choose your class of solider, i.e. Sniper, SMG Specialist etc, and go into combat with fellow gamers, each individual entering under a completely different persona. This hyper reality is unmatched; you can join online games in a matter of minutes playing people from all over the world entering into a new era of competition. The more troubling side to it however, billions of people are spending money every day, buying weapons, maps and upgrades, purchasing but pixels on a screen which have no value what so ever out of context. But still this isn’t the problem, there have been more and more cases recently of people dying due to playing games for too long, a man named Chris Staniforth unfortunately died from a blood clot due to being in the same position for too long surely there is nothing good to come from this hyper reality people seem to be getting caught up in, people need to always be able to distinguish between reality and hyper reality other wise we will end up with more and more cases like Chris’s.


Essay Proposal.

Title:

To compare and Asses theories on who control the brand: The consumer or the company. Using McDonalds as an example.


Books:

Olins, W (2003). On Brand. London: Thames & Hudson.

Concepts: Ethics within a brand

Applications: Theory can be supported with How brands change their ‘Environment’ to gain consumer respect.


Klein, N (2010). No Logo, London: Fourth Estate.


Concepts: Brands control us by stripping us of our individuality

Application: theories can be backed up with how brands use emotional ties to attract us to their brand.




Favre, J-P (?). Colour and communication, Zurich: ABC editions

Concepts: Ethics within a brand

Applications: Theory can be supported with how brands change their ‘Environment’ to gain consumer respect.


http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mitch-joel/consumer-brand-marketing_b_1287789.html

Concepts: Consumers control the brand

Applications: Theories can be backed up with McDonalds complying to consumer needs of more organic products.


http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/nov2007/sb2007118_797874.htm

Concepts: Successful brands target the heart not the mind.

Application: Using the theory, showing how McDonalds uses Emotional ties in order to gain a wide consumer audience.


http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/behind_the_label/941743/behind_the_brand_mcdonalds.html

Concepts: McDonalds multi billion dollar change in order to gain Consumer Loyalty

Application: facts and statistics throughout show how much McDonalds have done to keep consumers happy.





Saturday 24 March 2012

Panopticism.


Panopticism within Retail environment.

In retail environment consumers are conformed to comply with one of the fundamental laws of society, the act of theft, upon doing this they can be convicted of theft, either given a fine or sent to jail, although the consequences of their actions aren’t what hold the power over the consumer, it is more so to do with our society being based on the major effects of the Panopticon model, ‘to induce in the inmate a state of consciousness and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power’ ­­(Foucault, 1977), where the panoptic model of nineteenth century society was the central inspection tower in the middle of a prison, today’s society has seen a huge leap in technology with film, allowing for millions of CCTV cameras to be placed almost everywhere in public, these CCTV cameras in retail create power within the individual, becoming ‘self monitoring’, ‘self correcting’ ‘docile bodies’ (Foucault, 1977). It is the consumer that holds power over themselves, creating a mental power rather than a physical one implied by the store manager and society, and through this feeling the need to behave and adhere to the rules of society. This brings into play ‘power should be visible and unverifiable (Foucault, 1977)’, in this situation the camera would be visible, but you would not know if anybody is watching the video feed, hence the panoptic effect. This applies to anywhere monitored by CCTV the camera has now become the leading panoptic machine constantly creating a situation of ‘one being see but never seeing’ (Foucault, 1977); weather it’s walking down the street or waiting in an air port, the use of cameras has revolutionized the Panopticon, creating a wonderfully conformed world from a mental constraint. ‘a real subjection is born from a fictitious relation.’ (Foucault, 1977)

Monday 9 January 2012

Lecture 4. Critical positions on the media and popular culture.


Lecture4
- Critical positions on the media and popular culture.
Aims
• Critically define ‘popular culture’
• Contrast ideas of ‘culture’ with ‘popular culture’ and ‘mass culture
• Introduce Cultural Studies & Critical Theory
• Discuss culture as ideology
• Interrogate the social function of popular culture
What is culture?
- ‘One of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’
- General process of intellectual, spiritual & aesthetic development of a particular society, at a particular time
- A particular way of life
- Works of intellectual and especially artistic significance’
Raymond Williams – keywords
Due to relations of class a super structure forms along with culture.
Culture emerges from the base then almost legitimises.
If you think about pop culture instead of culture.
4 definitions of ‘popular
– Well liked by many people
– Inferior kinds of work
– Work deliberately setting out to win favour with the people
– Culture actually made by the people themselves
Popular culture is seen as a inferior to culture such as the arts and ballet etc.
Work that seems to be elited and obscure is seen s important whereas work that is understood by all is not.
Caspar David Friedrich (1805) monk by the sea.
Inferior or residual culture
• Popular Press vs Quality Press
• Popular Cinema vs Art Cinema
• Popular Entertainment vs Art Culture




Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane (2005) ‘Folk Archive’






Were coded into a certain way of thinking about good/bad aesthetics , so we judge cultural art from ‘folk’ because we thinks its terrible.


The problem is we judge things that aren’t in our class but with our class judgement which doesn’t make sense.


If we saw a painting by someone that had no experiences in our class of art, we would judge it as bad compared to ours when we shouldn’t due to the fact that they do not have the education we’ve had.






Graffiti went from being against the law to being shown in galleries, (Banksey) it went from authentic culture to being popular culture.






Before urbanisation society had a common culture,






E.P Thompson - working class people are condensed together but also physically separated from the owners of factories.


You get a physical distinction; this physical separation creates a cultural separation.


So being cut of and ghettoised they create there own culture of drinking in the pub and create comical music.






Chartism – campaign for the working class to vote in their own country.






Matthew Arnold (1867) Culture Anarchy.






• Culture is


– ‘the best that has been thought & said in the world’


– Study of perfection


– Attained through disinterested reading, writing thinking


– The pursuit of culture






•Culture polices ‘the raw and uncultivated masses’


–‘The working class… raw and half developed… long lain half hidden amidst it’s poverty and squalor… now issuing from it’s hiding place to assert an Englishmans heaven born privelige to do as he likes, and beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, breaking what it likes (1960, p.105)






Leavisism


F.R Leavis & Q.D Leavis






•Still forms a kind of repressed, common sense attitude to popular culture in this country.


•For Leavis-


C20th sees a cultural decline


Standardisation & levelling down


‘Culture has always been in minority keeping’


‘the minority, who had hitherto set the standard of taste without any serious challenge have experienced a ‘collapse of authority.






F.R. Leavis


Mass Civilisation & Minority Culture


Fiction & the Reading Publi

Q.D.Leavis


Culture & Environment


• Collapse of traditional authority comes at the same time as mass democracy (anarchy)


• Nostalgia for an era when the masses exhibited an unquestioning deference to (cultural)authority


• Popular culture offers addictive forms of ditraction and compensation


• ‘This form of compensation… is the very reverse of recreation, in that it tends, not to strengthen and refresh the addict for living, but to increase his unfitness by habitutaing him to weak evasions, to the refusal to face reality at all’ (Leavis & Thompson, 1977:100)


Reinterpreted Marx, for the 20th century – era of “late capitalism”



Defined “The Culture Industry” :


2 main products – homogeneity & predictability


“All mass culture is identical” :


‘As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will be rewarded, punished or forgotten’.


‘Movies and radio need no longer to pretend to be art. The truth, that they are just business, is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. ... The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry. ... The culture industry can pride itself on having energetically executed the previously clumsy transposition of art into the sphere of consumption, on making this a principle. ... film, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part ... all mass culture is identical.’

Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment,1944


Mass produced culture, all the same, just generated from masses of people.


As we continue to consume this mass produced culture, it codes us into certain ways of thinking in the world, because we are fed a 1 dimensional sight.


We are 1 dimensional beings, and it stop us having free and independent thought, it makes us robots that think the same as everyone else thinks.

‘Popular Culture v Affirmative Culture

‘The irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers more or less pleasantly to the producers and, through the latter, to the whole. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood. ... it becomes a way of life. It is a good way of life - much better than before - and as a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change. Thus emerges a pattern of one dimensional thought and behaviour in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe. ‘


Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 1968

Lecture 3. Marxism and Design Activism.


Lecture 3 – Marxism and Design Activism

Aims.
-       To introduce a critical definition of ideology
-       To introduce some of the basic principles of Marxist philosophy
-       To explain the extent to which the media constitutes us as subjects.
-       To introduce ‘ culture jamming’ and the idea of design activism

‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways the point however is to change it.’ Marx, K (1845) ‘Theses On Feuerbach’

Marxism is : was both a political manifesto which outlined what Marx saw as a better way of organising a society, Communists.

What is Capitalism?
-       Control of the means of production in private hands
-       A market where labour power is bought and sold
-       Production of commodities for sale
-       Use of money as a means of exchange
-       Competition / Meritocracy

Communist Evolution

-  Primitive Communism: as seen in cooperative tribal societies.
-  Slave Society: develops when the tribe becomes a
      city-state. Birth of aristocracy.
-  Feudalism: aristocracy becomes the ruling class. Merchants develop into capitalists.
-  Capitalism: capitalists are the ruling class, who create and employ the real working classes.
-  Socialism: (“Dictatorship of Proletariat"): workers gain class consciousness, overthrow the capitalists and take control over the state.
-  Communism: a classless and stateless society.


This is a competition that’s put upon us since we were young, to be better than our peers and to excel more.

Marx’s Concept of base /superstructure

Base             

Forces of production          -         materials, tools, workers, skills, etc.
             
Relations of production      -         employer/employee, class, master/slave, etc
                                                                                       
Superstructure

social institutions             -           legal, political, cultural

forms of consciousness  -            ideology *


Everything  - law, culture, art, education, and philosophy can be traced back to issues of class gender politics, racial politics.

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When hunter Gather were thriving there were no single relationships and the women were in dominant  because every one had sex with every body, only women knew who their children were.

In the social production of their life men enter into definite, necessary relations, that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness.
At a certain stage in their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production..…From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters.
With the change in economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic, in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.’


The state – but a committee for managing the common affairs f of the whole bourgeoisie (Marx & Engels (1848) ‘Communist maifesto’


Instruments of the state ideology and physical coercion

The Bourgeoisie

The Proletariat


Religion in a Marxist reading can be the ultimate form of mental control, because it states that if you poor an live a moral life you will be rewarded in heaven.

Ideology
-  System of ideas or beliefs (eg beliefs of a political party)
-  Masking, distortion, or selection of ideas, to reinforce power             relations, through creation of 'false consciousness'
Religion and things alike create a false consciousness; we don’t understand our relationship to society.

[The ruling class has] to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, ... to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.
Karl Marx, (1846) The German Ideology,
The ones in control must create these false common interests to make the society believe that its what they want.

Art as ideology, art has always been ideology, it isn’t about one persons free expression.
-       Classical art, the only people who could do art would have been high class rich people.
-       Women weren’t allowed to be artists
-       Only kings and queens could buy art, so it was them dictating what was painted
-       It reflects the ways a ruling class thinks.

Althusser, (1970) ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’

SOCIETY = ECONOMIC, POLITICAL & IDEOLOGICAL
Ideology is a practice through which men and women ‘live’ their relations to real conditions of existence.
Ideology offers false, but seemingly true resolutions to social imbalance

Ideology becomes a mechanism in which we live our lives, it offers reasons for why we are in our situation.
-       A means of production
-       Disseminates the views of the ruling class (dominant hegemonic)
-       Media creates a false consciousness
-       The individual is produced by nature; the subject by culture. (Fiske, 1992)
-       The constitution of the subject
-       Interpellation (Althusser)
All of the media outlets are owned by 8 superior forces,  which in turn means the control everything we think.

Rupert Murdoch boasts how he has the power to control elections, historically the SUN was a torrie paper but it turned to back labour due to government funding.

Daily star – working class people

The Times – higher class

Even in classes we are fed what to read etc.

1. System of ideas or beliefs (eg beliefs of a political party)

2. Masking, distortion, or selection of ideas, to reinforce power relations, through creation of 'false consciousness'

[The ruling class is] compelled ... to represent its interests as the common interest of all members of society ... to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.
Karl Marx, The German Ideology, 1846.

Saying women don’t need to do anything but shag their way to success.
Commodity fetishism – A fetish is something that gets in the way of an act – e.g. sexual fetish.

-       The assets of the worlds top three billionaires are greater than those of the poorest 600 million on the planet
-       More than a third of the worlds population (2.8 billion)live on less than two dollars a day
-       1.2 billion live on less than one dollar a day
-       In 2002 34.6 million Americans lived below the official poverty line (8.5 million of those had jobs!) Black American Poverty double that of whites
-       Per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa =$490
-       Per capita subsidy for European cows = $913
Since 1989 all communists countries died and we live in the age of no appearance.