The Branding of Identity and Culture

Whether the product is blue jeans or coffee, american consumers tend to identify with the brands they consume. While rarely there is no significant difference between the quality of products, some brands tend to be more successful than others. This success is due to how the brand is marketed. If an advertisement campaign of a particular product is successful in making the brand a symbol of the present culture and also cause consumers to identify with particular brand, the product or brand will be widely successful.
In No Logo, Naomi Klein relates her experience with Clavin Klein jeans. Calvin Klein hired an actress and model named Brooke Shields as their spokesperson. At the time Brooke Shields was argulably the most well known face in the world. The genius of the advertising campaign lay not in her endorsing the blue jeans but conveying the notion that if one did not where Calvin Klein jeans, they were not in step with the prevailing culture of the day. As many a young girl worldwide identified and wanted to be like Brooke Shields, the blue jeans literally flew off the shelves. The campaign was so successful that the pants were not called blue jeans but Calvins. The branding of culture and identity is not about products, it's about attitude.
As, Richard Branson, the head of Virgin Group, a multi-national corporation says in No Logo, the trick is to "build brands not around products but around reputation." Scott Bedbury, vice president of marketing at Starbuck readily admits that "consumers don't truly believe ther's a huge difference between products, which is why brands must establish emotional ties with their customers through the Starbucks experience." The brands that will flourisjh in the future will be the ones presented not as commodities but as concepts: the brand as experience, as lifestyle.
Marketing is not about products anymore. Marketing and advertising are about the psychological impact a particular brand can have on the consumers lifestyle. Successful products
not only are innovative and dependable, they also make the consumer feel good about purchasing them. They are able to convince the consumer that a particular is a "must have" in todays lifestyle and culture. The consumer must identify with a particular brand not a particular product. Identity and culture are clearly fixtures in the new marketing equation.