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Douglas Holt and James Twitchell

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from: Douglas Holt

The Cultural Effects of Branding

Posted Wednesday, May 30, 2001, at 2:04 PM ET

Goodness Jim, we're not going to settle this one. Can't you just let me have the last word and be done with it?

You continue to distort my argument to make it easy for you to slap on the trite neo-liberal response (e.g., how come companies fail if they're so powerful?). My argument is certainly not that individual companies control our tastes. Rather I'm making a macro argument here: You and I consume differently because of the way that large companies (collectively) make use of culture to add value to their brands. Companies today largely control the pipelines through which culture flows. And their authorship makes a difference. Consider how a great novelist once was able to recast the thinking of an entire generation. Today branding plays this role. This is not a high-low debate, as much as you want to frame it as such.

The question on the table is whether the way in which marketers do business helps to shape culture rather than just mirroring it. Not only would your critical studies friends down the hall disagree with you, but so, too, would the leading branders at major consumer goods firms and ad agencies. Marketing the historical jazz experience through the tightly produced and Disneyfied Lou Rawls Cultural Center recently opened in Bronzeville instead of through the musty and disorderly confines of the Palm shapes the experience! No different than Ken Burns' recent docu-spectacle Jazz, in which his choices of whom to marginalize in the jazz pantheon--notably the work of Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago--shapes the experiences of "what is jazz" for millions. Branding today, collectively, has these same cultural effects.

Haven't you seen any ads today? Don't you think it's about time for Absolut to kill the bottle?

Drink up,
Doug

the breakfast table
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from: Douglas Holt

The Cultural Effects of Branding

Posted Wednesday, May 30, 2001, at 2:04 PM ET
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James Twitchell is supposed to be teaching English literature but is more interested in the marketing of stuff. He has written books on advertising (Adcult USA, Twenty Ads That Shook the World) and has a mild defense of luxury consumption coming out next year (Living It Up: Why We Love Luxury). Douglas Holt is a professor at Harvard Business School.
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: Let's talk about coffee. Joseph Britt., below, was just one of many--follow the thread, and consider the question of tipping the barista. He still had time to discuss milk, here, too. And Brendan Herlihy took on ice-cream here. Neill Hamilton is looking for more "dissent, anger, blood feuds... I want the people writing in the Breakfast Table to open up life long vendettas" here (he always is, he's the Breakfast Table's official trouble-maker), but Richard Walrath enjoyed the banter: "it's almost like being there with the third cup of coffee."]


We're really talking about two different things here, aren't we? Coffee, and then all the froofy coffee-influenced liquid dessert-style beverages that take up most of the space on coffee house menus. I have nothing against the latter (because making fun of them is always a good time), but coffee is a really serious subject. If you're going to drink something nearly every day, it might as well be good. This is why I've never understood all the sneering condescension directed at Starbucks. Pre-Starbucks, most coffee served in public places was awful--you were ahead of the game if you ordered came out hot, caffeinated and with no taste at all. OK, most coffee served in public places is still awful, but with Starbucks you at least have the choice of having a good cup of coffee.

I confess I think Starbucks is slipping, based on extensive research I've done at the Minneapolis Airport. They used to offer a rotation of different coffees--Sumatra, Mocha Java, even New Guinea--but now seem to mostly serve up a couple of blends with names like "European" and "Christmas." Talk about your brand marketing. Also they routinely serve the coffee so hot you wonder if there is something wrong with the water they're using.

--Joseph Britt

(To reply, click here.)


 Maybe the students in Mr. Twitchell's anecdote couldn't tell good poetry from bad without guidance, but this doesn't strike me as being universally true. Poetry isn't my thing, but music is, and I have no trouble separating the good from the bad using only my own ears. If there wasn't something intrinsic in good art, we wouldn't, over time, have come to a general agreement about the relative worth of, say, Mozart vs. Salieri.

--Chloe Pajerek

(To reply, click here.)

 (5/30)

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