Benjamin Johnston wrote:
You guys are insane.
No doubt. :)
Boardrooms of "big corporations" are not full of evil types who are constantly scheming to infiltrate evil new verbs into the English language
Um... yes they are. :)...I don't really believe that, by the way. Not entirely, anyway. But these are intelligent savvy people, and they do know what they're doing. Some of them don't have the scruples that you might hope, and people do have a propensity to do the things that they think they can get away with...
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.
Of course. It's *people* who operate "the machine". Real living breathing eating shitting rooting hairy smelly fallible mortal ones. Gotta love 'em. :)
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.
Sure. The point is that the message is extremely well thought out, and relentlessly and strategically applied. It presents a "veneer" designed to promote "trust". It is overly *calculated* and *manipulative*.
It's a mistake to trust a "brand", because behind the veneer they're dynamic and fickle entities... always changing, and implicitly inconsistent. As a power structure, they're horrifying.
The point is simply that "the brand" competes in a global economy for "mind share". They *want* you to think about them, and they want you to know "what their message is", and so... they're really looking forward to getting a moment of your attention while you're drying your hands. ...and if you don't like your reality being spammed, well... tough luck.
Maybe I could just put it simply by saying: I find it disturbing that a person might have a positive emotional response to a branding campaign.
Or, to put it yet another way per your analogy: how would you feel about a person who would misrepresent themselves to you, and have you believe that they're something that they are not?
At any rate, as I've come down pretty heavy on the "against" side of the "Branding is good or bad? Discuss." argument, let me remind you that I follow branding guidelines, and I see the value in aspiring to consistent levels of quality, and to the extent that branding ideals are genuine I support them and their application inside The Corporation. Certainly it's in The Corporation's interest to make sure that their brand's ideals *are* genuine, because otherwise they take a pretty big risk of having their brand damaged. So... there is definitely an incentive for organisational integrity. Especially in the presence of The Truth. (I.e. I'm not actually insane. T'sall good. ;)
- You are subscribed to the progsoc mailing list. To unsubscribe, send a message containing "unsubscribe" to progsoc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx If you are having trouble, ask owner-progsoc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx for help.