Having read Naomi Klein's No Logo several years ago and been stirred by her central thesis, we were cautious about Debbie Millman's Brand Thinking, but it didn't take long before we realized that the subtitle "and Other Noble Pursuits" was rather tongue-in-cheek. When Millman says "brand thinking," she means thinking, but she doesn't give the same weight to "noble." Capturing interviews with the likes of Grant McCracken and Malcolm Gladwell while getting Karim Rashid to admit that he was embarrassed by some of his older designs for preposterously expensive couches, Brand Thinking encapsulates the conflict inherent in branding today.
These aren't easy questions. What is a brand, and what does it mean? Millman points out that the first brand as a trademark was Bass Ale, according to the 1876 UK Trademark Act. Bass happens to taste fantastic (IMHO) but it also sells at a premium. Buying a Bass "says" something about the buyer (e.g. you're not a teetotaler, but also not likely a Nascar fan). At the same time, the origin of the Louis Vuitton "LV" logo pattern was created based upon Victorian Orientalism, but was ultimately patented and succeeded at avoiding counterfeiting as well. Now Louis Vuitton has moved from painstakingly crafted leather trunks to being a small part of the megalithic LVMH it has drastically reduced quality in favor of quarterly profits. LV "branded" counterfeit products can be found at fractional prices from Canal Street to Shanghai, where the projection of brand identity has become paramount to the underpinning quality. We wonder though, once quality ceases to define a brand, what fills the void?
The British "chav" subculture has pursued brands to the point that Burberry plaid "became" their identity, not the other way around. Cristal champagne was wholly embraced by hip-hop culture, until a brand director quipped "We can't forbid people from buying it" and yet that's precisely what many luxury brands do with their pricepoints. The looming trouble for many of these brands, however, is that modern technology makes superficially luxurious products more affordable. Dana Thomas's Deluxe presented a detailed chronology of the devaluation of brand in world culture and examines directly what Millman ascertains in interviews. Nancy Ectoff's Survival of the Prettiest took Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class to its logical conclusion, explaining that wasteful adornment that took thousands of man-hours to make connotes social status. The question of what brand means in the modern era of mass production is far more ineffable. Every day, how we adorn ourselves makes a statement about the sort of person we are.
Even more amazingly, though, brands are shaping our culture. In interviewing Grant McCracken, Millman reveals not only that the Coke bottle is an iconic shape, but also that Coke's Christmas campaigns gradually changed jolly old St. Nicholas from a green-attired woodsman to the red and white "Santa Claus" of today. Red and white are the colors of Coke. What does that say about Coke? More troubling, what does that say about us?
