Once upon a time somebody dreamt of a new way to survive in the murky capitalist slime-pool. He looked around him, and saw that the prominence of the text had been totally deconstructed and that people were being tranquilised by an onslaught of flashy images. He tried having an intelligent conversation with the world but found that he was lost and ignored in the white noise of pretty pictures. So he figured that he had better produce his very own pretty easily-take-in-able, easily-consumable picture to enable a rational and an emotional engagement with others. This pretty picture he called a brand. Turned out to be really quite successful and he soon became leader of the local council and in order to make his town more successful, more visible in the global conglomeration of towns and cities, he decided to give it a knowable brand too. This, he smoothly told the voters, would enable the town to be a real place, distinguishable and identifiable. The brand had nothing at all to do with, he assured the people, either distribution networks, international consumption communities, fetishised, reductive images or the maintenance of power.
.....................
“You are all lost without a brand” the university trainer practically shouted. “Online identity? You decide. The power is in your hands!” Mesmerizing stuff. She had done this before, I could tell. “Now some might try and tell you that branding is bad, but in fact it is all about choice.”
Turns out I get to choose which limited, coherent, package of myself I want to sell. And if I don’t wish to reduce myself to a standardized image...either somebody else will do it for me...or most likely I’ll be lost in a quantum sea of anonymity and insignificance. “You see” ...the trainer pleads for understanding, wildly waving the PowerPoint pointer at her own pretty picture. I mull it over and wonder how much I want to be seen...and whose choice it might really be.
