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Re: [ProgSoc] Drying up, hands or money



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. ;)








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