Beyond the Brand

One may remember the breathtaking photograph depicting a herd of brown horses gathered closely together, with a beautiful white horse in their midst. It was made end of October 2006, by Laurens Aaij, a young Dutch photographer. His photograph won the 58th edition of the Zilveren Camera, an award given to the best Dutch photograph of 2006. Aaij made the photo in Marrum, in the Dutch province of Friesland. Due to heavy rainfall a herd of about a hundred horses found themselves isolated on a small patch of land. Eighteen horses drowned. Closely gathered together they waited for some days, until they were lured back to the mainland by horsesmen. Aaij took the picture of the horses before they were rescued. Out of 9147 entries the jury of the Zilveren Camera unanimously chose Aaij’s photograph. They regarded the white horse in the photograph a symbol of hope, describing it as “standing fiercely upright in the midst of muddy misery. A magnificent photograph, lighted in a Rembrandtesque way. An icon for contemporary heroes.” (NRC Handelsblad, 08-01-2007, p. 1)

photograph by Laurens Aaij, 2006

It is quite remarkable that it was this particular news photograph that won the award, seeing as the year 2006 was a very tumultuous and dramatic year in Dutch politics. However, the political news photographs, such as the photograph of a grief-stricken Ayaan Hirsi Ali, announcing her departure from Dutch politics on the 16th of May 2006, were overlooked by the Jury of the Zilveren Camera. Laurens Aaij’s explanation to as to why he won the award was that it was a “welcome change to the jury” (NRC Handelsblad, 08-01-2007, p. 1). This explanation, in my view, is inadequate. Why did his photograph really win the Zilveren Camera?

Douglas Rushkoff wrote in his article Leggo my Logos, the Branding of Human Culture, that the brand began as a way for ranchers to identify and claim their cattle. Products were branded with the same purpose, and advertising “simply meant publicizing the existence of one’s brand. The sole objective was to increase consumers awareness of the product or company that made it”. (Rushkoff, 2003) In 1922 Claude Hopkins wrote Scientific Advertising, and brought about a whole different outlook on advertising. He believed in “the more you tell, the more you sell” and “white space is wasted space”, choosing the written word over the image. Some decades later the advertisers began to favor the image, due to the popularity of television, and advertiser Leo Burnett introduced using lovable characters to represent products, such as the Marlboro Man. In the 1960s the advertiser David Ogilvy promoted the image of the brand, and not the product itself, as he believed that the customer couldn’t distinguish between products unless their images were different. During this time demographics (market research to help advertisers know which segments of the population they can influence) and brand image were combined to develop the most effective advertising campaigns.

Marlboro man

Brands are hard to dismiss in today’s society. However, James Surowiecki, in his article The Decline of Brands of 2004, thinks that the brand is on its return. Consumers are no longer loyal to their product, despite the fact that companies are spending large amounts of time and money into the branding of their product. This is a new development, because consumer-goods markets used to be very stable, and consumers would stick to their product for years. The companies of the past, such as Disney, did not become successful because their brand was strong, but because they offered the best animation movies. If a brand was strong, people would link it to quality, and start buying it. The company would then assume that it had customers for life. Surowiecki states that now “consumers are continually looking for a better deal, opening the door for companies to introduce a raft of new products” (Surowiecki, 2004). Because the consumer is fickle, the established brands are in a weak position, and this is the reason why new brands are created. In electronics, consumers will no longer pay more money for the same stereo even if it has a Sony logo. According to Surowiecki, brands are becoming nothing more than shadows, as consumers become more powerful. (Surowiecki, 2004)

The changing character of advertising campaigns is discussed in Simons’ book Peruasion in Society. Five phases are explored: idolatry, iconology, narcissism, totemism, and pantheistic.

Advertising one’s product became necessary after the Industrial Revolution, because people encountered unknown mass-produced products for the first time, of which they didn’t always know the purpose of. This resulted in advertising becoming “necessary to connect commodities to culturally approved means of satisfying needs” (Simons, 2001, p. 277). Advertising has come a long way since the 19th century, and five phases in the development of consumer culture can be distinguished.

An advertisement for the Nodark Camera, 1900

Alexander Rodchenko, advertisement for "books for all branches of knowledge", 1925

Allthough seemingly on opposite ends of the political spectrum, Russia and the United States were not so different in how they advertised their ideologies in the 1920s and 30s.

Dove, a beauty concern that sells skin, body cleansing and hair care products, has recently initiated its “Tijd voor echte schoonheid” campaign (translated: time for real beauty) in the Netherlands. This campaign shows ‘real’ women with a healthy figure. This way Dove has tried to reframe the beauty industry, by emphasizing the negative self-image women have due to all the skinny models they continually see parading around in commercials. Dove describes their campaign on their website www.tijdvoorechteschoonheid.nl:

Every day we are being bombarded with hundreds of retouched photographs and images of ‘beauties’... Images that influence the way we regard our bodies and ourselves. Who determines what beauty is? How can we relieve this enormous pressure? How can we help the girls and women to regard their bodies in a positive way? We need to take action!

Time for Real Beauty campaign

Simons’ concept of reframing is manifested in the graphic design collective of Wild Plakken of the 1970, who felt that the world needed to change.

H.W. Simons writes in his book Persuasion in Society that a “frame is one among a number of possible ways of seeing something, and a reframing is a way of seeing it differently; in effect changing its meaning.” (Simons, 2001). A reframing of the conceptual identity of graphic design took place at the end of the 1970s, when Wild Plakken was founded. This movement consisted of campaigners and lobbyists, and was involved in the struggle against unemployment and unequal rights, supported the squatters, and highlighted the housing shortage as well as the growing dissatisfaction in society. It “revealed the Achilles heel of the Dutch welfare state and visualized the growing dissatisfaction in society” (Ten Duis & Haase, 1999, p. 181).

Wild Plakken, “Woman against Apartheid”, 1984