Many of us feel that BRANDING contains many of the dangers of modern living.
Here's the argument:
We humans make sense of the world using
narratives. Our expectations for how things work are are projections of stories we've heard.
A good BRAND is a really dense and adaptable form of narrative. Current marketing strategies focus on designing brands which can be easily and seamlessly become components of one's identity. Visualize the person wearing Adidas shoes, shirt, shorts, he's probably jogging or playing sports, you think of him as an active person. This is why you'd buy Adidas, because you resonate with that image in some way and want to incorporate it into your lifestyle.

Marketers capitalize on your desire to broadcast your identity and whatever has meaning in your life. They design brands which highlight personally relevant topics -- so you can be that health conscious guy drinking a vitamin water, that free thinker using a mac, that trendy media wizard on his iphone, that always-active guy in the Nike jersey. But as our culture becomes increasingly bent towards commercialism, brands have hijacked everyday life.
"The freedom of conversation is being lost. If earlier it was a matter of course to take interest in one’s partner, this is now replaced by inquiry into the price of his shoes or his umbrella. Irresistibly intruding upon any convivial exchange is the theme of the conditions of life, of money. What this theme involves is not so much the concerns and sorrows of individuals, in which they might be able to help one another, as the overall picture. It is as if one were trapped in a theater and had to follow the events on the stage whether one wanted to or not, had to make them again and again, willingly or unwillingly, the subject of one’s thought and speech."
So Kalle Lasn and the Adbusters crew wanted to stop this. Their stated goal is "to bring the factory of images to a shuddering halt." They produce publications and events which encourage people to quit paying so much attention to each other's goddamn shoes. They think that by building ourselves out of commercial brands, by emphasizing commerce in everything we do, we've limited and stunted our mental freedom and have lost some degree of our autonomy. I agree with this.
Sadly, Kalle and crew don't have a great solution. Their response to commercialism is an effete "Just say no." They do not provide any alternative for those of us who agree with their position but still have to buy shoes every few months. (Well, they did have an answer, the
Black Spot shoes, but that was an abyssal failure) Branding strategies are incredibly powerful and therefore attractive to people. If they want to spark a mass revolt against commercialism, they need to provide something
cooler than commercialism. (Arch-Situationist Guy Deboard sadly insists that anything which can beat commercialism is temporary, and will eventually just be subsumed by commercialism. But I think that's okay if it gets the ball rolling)
so that's the problem.
So Here's My IdeaWhat if there were brands not connected to a commercial product line?
Let's take the cool things about being "unbranded" and design a brand for it. But we don't then put that brand on sneakers and try to sell them to people. We give people the tools to express the brand in their own way.
Let's visualize it:
You're conscious of the world around you.
You're neophilic - you're not afraid of doing new things. You like do-it-yourself projects. You like meeting new people. You desire awesome experiences and things which make you feel like you're really alive.
You've figured out how to detach from the rat race. Your job is just this thing you do, it's not You. You know that you're not your wallet or the pieces of plastic inside of it.
You choose products based on quality and ignore as much of the marketing as possible.
You think commercials are boring. You are aware of the various trances that commercialism creates and capitalizes on. When you see people zoned out at the supermarket, glassy eyed and watching TV, lifelessly driving cars, you feel bad for them. But you take heart that you have left their ranks.
The stuff in your life doesn't look like it just came out of the box. You like to modify things, play with them, change them to fit you better. You own a few articles of clothing that you created yourself. Your identity is better expressed through original creations than any product you've purchased.
And despite your choices, you are not alienated. You have a vibrant life which is oriented around things that matter to you.

These ideas would be connected to a symbol. This symbol can become part of your personal fashion. There is no retail outlet which carries these clothes, although
you can probably find some online, created by other people who are into this idea. (This is okay - we're not trying to create an absence of commercialism, we're just not letting it call all the shots)
It's sort of like being a "hippie". There is no official product line for hippies. Hippies tend to dress a certain way, but it is not a uniform. The Hippy identity (read: brand) is connected to a bunch of political, commercial, and recreational choices. People choose whether or not to orient onto those things on a case by case basis.
To design this brand (read: lifestyle), we'd make some choices about style, about what symbols and slogans to use, and include some highly charged documents which can motivate people to get into it. We could launch something like a marketing campaign, but the product we're pushing isn't for sale. It's you.
So that's the pitch
Do you think that a new noncommercial brand could provide an attractive alternative to branding culture?