ideas as brands

"My Brand" exhibition IMGA0034, originally uploaded by dadawan.

I was walking in the woods the other day and was thinking that we define every idea that ever existed as a brand. Brand is something that takes up residence in our brain. But not only brain of course. The tremendous advancements of the advertisement industry in America demonstrated that a brand is not just a piece of code or a formula but the music, the art, the emotions, the madness.

A brand might have a direct relationship with a product or an experience. The taste of yogurt evokes emotional sensation of pleasure reinforcing and building the brand. But sometimes the connection between the reality feedback and a brand is not as strong. Or brand could be purely philosophical. Political party is a brand, religion is a brand and even God is a brand.

Sometimes companies have to invest billions in maintaining a brand, sometimes a product “sells itself”. Brand could also act like a squatter; it just moves in into your head and announces that it is not going anywhere. The best brands not only promote themselves but they know your weak or strong points and they managed to involve your own energy in the promotion. They send invisible messengers to your soul to tap into your own power. (This is subconscious interpretation of the green revolution, the desire to be self sufficient, the fear of being reduced to slaves, the terror of others living off our life’s energy. [Insert the analogy here]).

But let me bring it down so you can feel it. Imagine you are in a 5th grade and you fell in love with a girl in your class. She never noticed you; she is not going to notice you. But you start working up the brand, imagining her beauty, convincing yourself that she is sending you some secret signals, interpreting her random words as if addressed to you. This is the best brad there is. Incidentally this is how God became a brand. In fact God is the ultimate brand, because with no effort on his part he can completely posses every fiber of your being. You can start hallucinating, imagining secret nods from the beloved, finding coded messages behind the 2nd row desk. Heck one day you will write a book and convince yourself it is all because of the muse, her words flowing from your pen.

These are the wet dreams of the Madison Avenue fantasist. I mean if you need a product that sells itself you might need a Honda with a century worth of manufacturing expertise but the ultimate brand is where you need nothing, just the fallible human imagination. From that point on the job of the Madison Avenue priests is easy. They come in and tell you that they have a secret direct connection to the girl you love. And she surreptitiously revealed to the priests that she is not ready to show her love. But she certainly will and if you demonstrate respect and obedience to the priests, they shall deliver to you a secret letter the girl wrote just for you. But we digress.

What I was trying to inscribe here is that everything in our heads is branded. The emotions we feel about a trip to Jamaica, people around us are brands, cola, etc. The best way to lessen the hold of a brand on our heads is to accumulate enough resources to purchase the objects of the brand desire, to go on that trip, to buy that girl, even to buy the priest. Don’t let brands poses you, poses the brands.

The accumulation of wealth is the only noble pursuit in this world. It sets you free.