Identity

With brands it is often the case that their identity is developed in house, following the suit of Kellner's theory for post-modern identity; that your identity is constructed and is in fact a 'fragmented self.' This is why KesselsKramer's work for Hans Brinker (budget hotel) is so successful, as they use Burr's theory of social constructionism as the selling point. With this anti-Essentialist approach, they've created a campaign full of humour which successfully communicates why this hotel is perfect for people looking for a place to stay, under a tight budget. Because it's essentially just, well... Shit. And generally speaking, shit is usually free or at least very cheap. 

Following on from this, every single brand can not avoid creating their own identities, at least partly, through Foucault's theory of Discourse Analysis. Discourse is the primary form of communication between a brand and their target audience, if you don't talk to your target audience correctly, you'll never have a successful brand. An incredibly simple way to highlight this is through Nationality, if your target audience is Dutch and your brand is Dutch, communicate in Dutch. If your target audience is from another country but your brands is Dutch, speak to them in their language. 

Finally, it's important to note how brands are constantly developing their identities as, according to Bauman, we have moved from a solid to fluid phase of modernity, in which nothing keeps its shape. Meaning that social forms are constantly changing at great speed, radically transforming the experience of being human. So how do brands keep up? This is when technology comes in to play, and more specifically social networks and interactive 'new medias.' By being able to immerse your audience in this third layer, you can convey your brands message and identity in to their everyday lives. Digital Agency R/GA's work for Nike's 'FuelBand' shows this perfectly, as their online database and target system keeps the user involved  throughout, therefore it evolves as the user does.

 

Johnson, M (2012). Problem Solved. 2nd ed. London: Phaidon Press. 46-61.

(2012). Advertising For People Who Don't Like Advertising. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd. 78-95.

(2014). KK: organ donation . Available: http://www.kesselskramer.com/communication/projects/organ-donation. Last accessed 27th Oct 2014.

(2013). D&AD13. Hohenzollernring: Taschen . 99.

The Gaze

The Gaze is primarily used in two ways, one that challenges and one that offers an invitation. For example, in the first image pictured the subjects are looking away from the camera/our point of view, so we in turn look in further detail at the faces and imagery. By doing that we are able to capture the emotion, and in this particular case, the sense of security felt by both the mother and her child that only VW can offer. 

When this form of inviting Gaze is used in fashion advertising, it's known as scopophilia. By allowing us to look we receive pleasure in the form of a basic unconscious drive. The most famous example of this is the iconic ad for Wonderbra pictured below, which at the time caused a large number of car accidents due to completely capturing the male's attention. 

On the opposite hand, in this print ad produced for Grupo Vhiver the subject is staring directly at the viewer. Giving it the appearance that the subject is communicating with you personally and directly, creating a more challenging and impactful effect; thus making us take the message in more seriously, inviting us to act upon it with haste. 

It's important to note however, that the same Gaze can be used on a different subject/industry to communicate an entirely different message. The gaze that challenges is regular content amongst charity advertisements as it creates a more serious, challenging impact - picturing the subject as truly vulnerable. In vast contrast to this, when used in fashion and beauty it highlights the confidence a piece can give you, how you can stand out from the crowd, how to attract attention. This is known as the mirror stage, with the projected notion of an 'ideal ego' in the image. An example of this is the pictured ad below for the French company Citadium adopts a rebellious approach, reinforced by the challenging Gaze, communicating the need and opportunity to stand out and be confident. 

Weinzettl, M (2012). Lürzer's Int'l Archive Vol. 6-2012. p19, 118.

(2014). Citadium: We are no hard feelings. Available: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/citadium_we_are_no_hard_feelings. Last accessed 27th Oct 2014.

Andy Fowler - 'Putting Brands in People's Hands'

New media reflects more closely on how we live our lives and in turn allows you to offer people an experience. This interactive experience can offer people tools for life and give them control of something, thus being an immersive layer in which the brand gets up close and personal with the audience and visa versa.

However, due to the mass amount of new media at our disposal we have to be fearless in our ideas and embrace that some things might not work. In opposition to this, it also allows us to be the first to do things, to really capture the sight and time of the audience in a revolutionary way.

Putting Brands in People's Hands

(2011). PUTTING BRANDS IN PEOPLE'S HANDS.. Available: http://www.ipa.co.uk/Page/Creatives-Channel#.VEoiWYvF_R0.

Simulacra and Simulation

Divine Irreference of Images.

Simulation is not pretending, pretending/dissimulation leaves the principle of reality intact; the difference is always clear, just simply masked. Whereas simulation threatens the difference between what is true and what is false. If there's a lack of distinction between the two, it is the worst kind of subversion as it submerges the principle of truth.

According to Baudrillard, simulation stems from the utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and death sentence of every reference.  Whereas representation attempts to absorb simulation by interpreting it as a false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation itself as simulacrum.

Such would be the successive phases of an image:
it is the reflection of a profound reality;
it masks and denatures a profound reality;
it masks the absence of a profound reality;
it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing marks a decisive turning point. The first reflects a theology of truth and secrecy, whereas the second inaugurates the era of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer a last judgement to separate the false from the true. Simulation's phase that concerns us is a strategy of the real, of the neoreal and the hyperreal that everywhere is the double of a strategy of deterrence.

Hypermarket and Hyper-commodity.

Despite the purpose of a Hypermarket, another kind of work is issued in these places, the work of acculturation, of confrontation, of examination, of the social code. People go there to find and select objects/responses to all the questions they may ask themselves. Objects become tests, they are the ones who interrogate us, and we are then summoned to answer them, and the answer is always included in the question. This is neither information nor communication, but referendum, a verification of the code. Growing reliance on self-service adds to this absence of depth, it's a space of direct manipulation.

The hypermarket is already beyond the traditional institutions of capital, it is the model of all future forms of controlled socialisation. A model of directed anticipation, it is what gives rise to metro areas - delimited functional urban zoning - whereas traditional markets were in the hearts of cities. This means that it is the hypermarket that acts as a nucleus, it establishes an orbit along which suburbanisation moves - as the university or factory sometimes does.

Ground-Zero Advertising.

We are currently experiencing the absorption of all virtual modes of expression into that of advertising. The convergence caused by propaganda approaching advertising, defines our society - in which there is no longer any difference between the economic and political, because the same language reigns in both.  This leads to a society where the political economy is finally fully realised.

Following the convergence of politics and advertising, the social turns itself into advertising in an attempt to impose its trademark image. A sociality that is ever present, finally realised in absolute advertising - a vestige of sociality hallucinated on every wall in the simplified form of a demand of the social that is immediately met by the echo of advertising. The social as a script, whose bewildered audience we are.

Arguably, according to Baudrillard the power and fascination to simplify all languages with advertising has been stolen from it by another type of language that is even more simplified and more functional: the languages of computer science. These systems polarise the fascination that formerly devolved on advertising. It's information, that will put/is already putting an end to the reign of advertising. The thrill of advertising has been displaced onto computers.

Currently, Baudrillard believes that the most interesting aspect of advertising is its disappearance, its dilution as a specific form. Advertising is completely in unison with the social, whose historical necessity has found itself absorbed by the pure and simple demand for the social. Today, true advertising lies therein: in the design of the social, the need for which makes itself rudely felt. I fully agree with this as a young creative, as it is interesting to experiment with advertising as a variety of forms, as they all are in unison with the social yet some forms are a lot more effective than others.

Baudrillard, J & Glaser, S (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. 3-94.

Visual Culture: The Reader

The signified is often humiliated due to the distracted gaze of the urban consumer. 'The Face' magazine is laid out in such a way as to ease the restless passage of this distracted gaze, as an integrated package of graphic, typographic and photographic (dis)information it invites the reader to wander through picking up whatever they find attractive, useful or appealing.  The reader is licensed to to use whatever has been devoted in whatever way and in whatever combination proves most useful and satisfying.  Introduced as a post-structuralist strategy for going beyond the strict confinement of critical activity, cruising allowed the reader to take pleasure in a text without being obliged at the same time to make some form of pledge/commitment.

This Second World model is contrasted by the First World, housing critics such as John Berger who takes up a different position regarding what photography and writing on photography is. Berger has been seeking to bind the photography back to its original context, attempting to place the photography within a web of narratives which are designed to authenticate its substance. On the other hand, disciples of the Second World (Post) do not seek to recover the truth captured in an image, but rather to liberate the signifier from the constraints imposed upon it by the rationalist theology of representation. By retaining a belief in a beyond and a beneath, members of the First World are seen by Post critics to be continuing submission to an old fashioned, disabling metaphysic.

Furthermore, the direct project of the Post is to replace the dominant Platonic regime of meaning (Representation) with a radical anti-system, promoting the articulation of difference as reasoning itself. It is a multi-aspected attack on the authoritarian structure which is seen to shadow all First World discourse guaranteeing truth. The consequences of the assault on representation for image makers, are on the whole, rather more mundane. There is the disappearance of the referent and the signified, leaving us with no meaning, no classes, no history; just a ceaseless procession of simulacra.

Following on, Baudrillard claims that  appearances can no longer be said to falsify reality, and that reality is no more than the never knowable sum of all appearances. Implying reality flickers and that it will never stay still, that we cease to exist as rational beings capable of standing back and understanding the basis of our experience. In fact it's implied that there is no ledge for us to stand back on due to the information we handle continuously changing without us ever owning or storing the material that we process.

Evans, J & Hall, S. (1999). Visual Culture: The Reader. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. p107-110.

The Republic - Plato

How is it possible to see something if you've been prevented from it your entire life? Information that is screened is information that we believe to be real, a whole truth. By removing the screen, you would object to this information as though it were false, thus believing what you used to see was truer. This is part of a painful, lengthy process in which your views and beliefs would adjust to be hit by a realisation of the force that is responsible for what we see. This is the idyllic life as it is much truer, however if you were to try and enlighten everyone else who's still being fed with screened information they will not believe you.  Views and beliefs may be unsighted in two ways however, a transition from the screening of information to a truer life without any screening and visa versa.

The capacity for knowledge is natural within everyones mind and everyone has the potential to experience a truer life. However you could never know if someone was experiencing a truer life as it is surely dependent upon their point of view; how could you know their sights were correct and not turned in another direction/the wrong way? The effects of belief can be useful and salutary or again useless and harmful according to the direction in which the person takes view.

Furthermore, people who have seen this truer life should be descended back in to the community as leaders, fully educated and better qualified to combine the practice of philosophy and politics. However they should live with their fellows until they are used to seeing what they see, the only difference being that they will distinguish every element of a view in comparison to the uneducated person seeing it as a whole. The ideal leaders should be people who do not love power,  these are people who are rich with true happiness of a good and rational life, otherwise there will always be rivals and quarrels.

Lee, D (1987). Plato - The Republic . 3rd ed. London: Penguin. 

The Challenge of Representing National Identities

One of the main problems faced when representing national identities is the use of stereotypes. Stereotypes have both positive and negative connotations, although they are often highly offensive to whom they are representative of, and are mainly blatant misconceptions of reality. However, as always it is dependent upon the target audience, and portraying one culture to another or to itself is a difficult task. Therefore by looking in to the audience's beliefs of what the other/their own culture is like, you can find a suitable way to represent the identity effectively, without insulting it.

In a one hour hit I created a small campaign for New York City Football Club, a new Major League Soccer team owned by a partnership between Manchester City and the New York Yankees, with the target audience being New Yorkers. Instead of looking in to the negative stereotypes of New Yorkers, I looked in to what it means to be one of them; even down to their use of public transport.

New Yorkers are perceived to always be 'in a rush,' but are they? By turning this perception on it's head I was able to pick out positive points, such as 'they know exactly what they want' and that they are 'efficient.' Both of these are traits of champions, reinforced by the repeated success of the New York Yankees, which happen to be in the same borough.

By forming a link between the football club and the Yankees I thought it would be an effective way of highlighting the New Yorker's efficient champion's mentality. I used the endline 'From One Pitch, To Another. This is Your City.' to unite the city as a whole and bring the existing sporting crowd in to the world of Major League Soccer. I believed that by targeting the already-existent sporting fan base it would unite the sports and spread the idea of being champions throughout the city, giving them a reason to support New York City Football Club.

Throughout this short project it occurred to me that stereotypes can be used in both positive and negative ways, dependent upon the way in which they are assembled. Providing their is existing evidence, when assembling a stereotype in a positive way you can learn a lot about the identity of the subject and in turn. how you can successfully communicate with them.