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RE: [ProgSoc] Drying up, hands or money




You guys are insane.

Boardrooms of "big corporations" are not full of evil types who are
constantly scheming to infiltrate evil new verbs into the English language,
to impose cruel font guidelines and invent terrible lies to manipulate
people into mindlessly walking out and buying things. Big corporations are
full of ordinary human beings - occasionally you'll get some people who are
greedy, but in general big corporations are made of lots and lots of people
who are just friends you haven't met yet.



Branding guidelines are important because they ensure consistency - they
ensure that everybody is sending out the same image that they're supposed
to. If you don't make these incredibly strict guidelines, then you'll get
the entry-level office staff printing logos in the wrong color, using the
wrong fonts, inserting crappy clip-art, using the blink tag on web sites and
otherwise creating documents that reflect poorly on the company. People
notice these things. Image is very important for everybody - whether you're
a large company maintaining a certain professional or fun image, a small
start up trying to impress investors, or a single programmer trying to
impress some hot girl/guy.

-Ben

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-progsoc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-progsoc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Elliot
Sent: Monday, 13 August 2007 23:22
To: progsoc@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ProgSoc] Drying up, hands or money

Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale wrote:
> Roland Turner wrote:
>> The "Great Lie" of [untracked] mass-media advertising (that it works, or
>> at least that it is a worthwhile investment) can now be so conclusively
>> disproven by tracked media
> 
> I'd need references to be convinced.

Yeah, I'm not convinced, either. (Notwithstanding a desire to be.)

Just be careful conflating "branding" and "advertising", btw.

The goal of the "brand" is complete and absolute integration with the 
culture.

That's why google secretly had their brand become a "verb". That's 
*exactly* what "the brand" wants. They lie and say they *don't* want 
that, for legal reasons regarding perceived risk that "the brand" might 
fall into the "public domain". ...but that *is* a lie, of course. For 
the term "google" to be not only "synonymous with search", but *also* to 
have an *entry in the dictionary!!!* is the height of branding success. 
Even to be used as exemplary (as is the case here) is a mark of success. 
To be mentioned is a success. To be seen, or to be thought or discussed: 
a branding success.

"Branding" is a much, much, much bigger deal than "advertising". It 
doesn't even have anything to do with "products or services". It has to 
do with building familiarity. ...and it works by absolute saturation, 
complete pervasiveness, subconscious suggestion, total needless endless 
inescapable tautologous ironic relentless exposure to a consistent 
integrated planned highly controlled well engineered multi-faceted 
multi-media expression of the "essence" of the brand as "cool", or 
"smart", or "sophisticated", etc.

No joke. That really is how branding works, and it really is what 
marketing departments in big corporations do. (Promise. I've been given 
"the branding guidelines" (I'm sure I'm not the only one on this list 
who's seen corporate branding guidelines?), and these people know 
*exactly* what they're doing, right down to the smallest detail (what 
colours you use, what fonts you use, what words you use, what tone of 
voice you use, how much clearance space you use, what contrast you use, 
what you can't say, what you can't be near, who you can talk to, who you 
can't talk to, what you should be near, where you place things, what 
graphics you use, which logo you use and when and where and how, etc.). 
It's... spooky. ...and soulless. ...and cruel.)

Laughter is pretty much the closest you'll get to a healthy defence... 
and it really is quite ridiculous. The tragedy is that it seems to work. 
It does seem that people *really do* develop brand affinities and desires.










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