#Branded

My old English teacher would have a heart attack if he saw how many times I use the word 'brand' on this website. But I don't like the other options that the microsoft office 'synonyms' funtion offers me.. 'sort', 'kind', 'variety', 'product' (product features a lot too, but to mean something quite different - funny how words do that isn't it? Takes me straight back to my semiotics lecture. More on that later).
The point is, everything is now a brand. I literally can't refer to my work without the word brand in every sentence.

To demonstrate: some peculiar things which have been developed as brands:

People:
Not least surprising are people like Katie Price and the Dalai Lama. Forget keeping up with the Kardashians, ima get my daily tweets from the Ashram of Serenity and Bright Light, India y'all!

On a serious note though, there are issues. All social media - indeed all marketing - is reductive of actual experience. The brand-builders decide what you see and know about a 'product' - they have to, they're trying to sell it. In terms of 'people-as-product', it projects a person's values according to metrics that typically apply to more conventional products: What are the key features of brand Obama? What is the target audience, what elements of the Obama message can we leverage to access this untapped market? and so on. This is fine if the person in question is well-versed for such puppetry (politicians generally have no difficulty) but generally the whole charade adds to a Jamesian 'depthlessness' of public information which has come to characterise much of the media's output.(NB swotty reference to cultural logic of late capitalism: Frederic Jameson for anyone who's interested). In broad terms this means that information has less to do with truth and more to do with what ideas are for sale on the black market of moral bankruptcy.. BLEAK.
In short, if it's a person that needs to be marketed, it should be done with authenticity, integrity and not an inconsiderable amount of style in order to cut through the bullshit. Team Katie Price, due to the product in question, are actually doing ok.

Places:
Not just places like London which enjoy a lengthy heritage in popular imagination but whole countries and then some really small places too. Costa Rica for example and down-town Harlem in NYC have rolled out cohesive marketing strategies and 'destination management' policies. Bizarre for the impression it gives of being a commercial 'product'. Harlem is jolly well going to have a say in how you perceive it's USPs thank you very much. Westonbirt Arboretum? (That'll be a relatively small collection of trees) - £10 for a privileged peek at these leafy boughs and a chance to buy a T shirt on the way out. Thanks very much for coming - please review us on tripadvisor. TREES I TELL YOU!
When it comes to branding, places were relatively unmarked territory (sorry) until recently. But increasingly, each untouched space has a host of brand guardians breathing commercial life into thin air...

But it's not all bad, check out Project Wild Thing. 'We've marketed everything under the sun, but now we want to market the sun itself'. Thrilling stuff. Now that is something my English teacher would have approved of.