Ads R Us

Alternative Investments contemplates brand management, snails and mango trees

Here on my desert island there are no adverts, thank God. Thank! God! No meretricious tripe befouls my vista. There are no smarmy attempts to insinuate knowledge of the latest brand of Pot Noodle into my mind. No tugging at the sex drive as an underhand way to get me to buy cars and jeans. No Z-list celebs telling me that my life would improve if only I used brand X deodorant. My island contains many privations, but this one I luxuriate in.

I have got brands on my island, though. And I regularly connect them with quality products. There is a type of mango tree, for instance, recognisable by its greater-than-average height. It reliably produces sweeter and plumper fruit than the other trees on the island. It stands as a guarantee of quality.

Then there are the giant land snails with stripy shells. They taste a bit like mutton, which is rather nice. The giant brown ones, on the other hand, taste like clay and are to be avoided.

So my aversion to advertising is hypocritical. Ads, goes the theory, alert people to quality products by connecting them to brands – ‘brand awareness’, in the jargon. And I’m being made aware of good food on the sland by the brand of the tall tree and the stripy snail.

But before I was marooned here, I remember that a book was published by an American woman in which it was argued that brands are a form of oppression. The book, No Logo, argued that consumers around the world are coerced into consuming by the lure of flashy logos. Nike, Starbucks, Tommy Hilfiger – all conspiracies to force people into buying things.

Now, no doubt people should exercise discrimination, but are brands to blame? Look at what the world was like before brands. Back in the 19th century, food began to be sourced from all over the place and sold in anonymous cities, instead of being produced by the local farmers, butchers and bakers who you would probably know socially, or whose reputation you would be aware of. As soon as that natural connection between producer and food was broken, the way was open to all sorts of nasty practices. Chocolate was adulterated with lead and vegetable fat. Tea had bits of twig in it. Arsenic got added to ice-cream – that sort of thing.

Obviously, there was a need for a guarantee that consumers would get what they thought they were getting. Brands like Cadbury’s, Liptons and Walls took off because they promised a basic level of quality. Prior to that, the array of food on offer was like what my island would be, if I didn’t have any way of distinguishing mango tree from mango tree, snail from snail. It was a gastronomic lottery, with death a possible losing ticket.

There is one way, though, in which my island brands are inferior to commercial brands. They cannot change. One good thing about brands that No Logo misses is that they are conduits through which mass consumer power can force companies to change. If I think that my mango trees are sucking up too much water, I can’t do much about it. If someone thinks their burger seller is using too much water to grow the spuds for their fries, they can stop buying them. Brands allow that sort of direct action to be taken.

But wishing for the death of brands is like wishing for the abolition of alcohol. It would be nice if people weren’t drunkards, but banning what makes them drunk isn’t going to stop it happening. It directs fire at the wrong target, but is easier and provides a more immediate thrill of moral virtue than trying to change the human heart, I suppose.
Speaking of thrills, my snail and mango salad awaits.