Naomi Klein discusses the rise of brands’s and their identities having an impact in popular culture- she discusses how designers such as Ralph Laurent polo and Lacoste ‘made their way off the golf course’ [ref] and onto the streets. She argues how culture would ‘add value’ to their brands, and by looking to be associated with that brand, their class, status and culture is projected onto the consumer. These kinds of thoughts have been discussed frequently in texts and documentaries about dress; Fresh Dressed documentary on Netflix also discusses how people in lower socio economic situations started adapting recognisable designer logo’s in eccentric ways, to also look like they are part of that social status and ultimately gain respect. The logo is just a front for they associated lifestyle, and that is what they are really buying into.
Klein says how logo’s can have different impacts- wether subtly to represent identity on garments, or Times Square (full frontal in your face branding), or alternatively sponsorships where we see logo’s featured at events. “This ambitious project makes the logo the central focus of everything it touches..the main attraction”.
Advertising leverages brands and imagery in order to equate products with social or cultural experiences
Celebrity endorsements
Klein says how ‘co-branding’ has developed in the rise of celebrity endorsements to promote and define a brand. Sponsorship was/is often a way to get pieces seen on tastemakers and influencers, so this postmodern shift in attitude could potentially show a defiance to capitalism in some ways. Brands can form a culture, or a mindset, around a certain lifestyle or way of being.
“I appeal to every producer not to release “sponsored” moving pictures… Believe me, if you jam advertising down their throats and pack their eyes and ears with it, you will build up a resentment that will in time damn your business.”- Carl Laemmle of Universal Pictures, 1931. All those years ago Laemmle said this, never the less Facebook have started doing exactly this, but for consumers, with their new series of sponsored adverts. Fashion companies are now promoting themselves mid music video, mid youtube video, interrupting our ‘escapism’ with products to feed consumer culture.
Fashion brands such as Hermes have been known for years as an elitist, upper middle-class white woman store where they cater for horses and other posh things, never the less by rappers wearing items of Hermes in popular culture, their brand appearance has shifted and they have become ‘current’.
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