Post-Branding

Everything that surrounds you is branded. Your clothes, your computer, your applications, the people you follow for information, the institutions that your rely on. This process has been happening, Klein argues in her book No Logo, since 1993 when Marlboro -- then the world's leading brand -- cut back its prices 20% because it had to compete with generics. The foundation of the advertising industry, that a good brand is value added, for which corporations can charge a premium, seemed to be proven wrong.

In the decades that followed, companies hollowed out their core competencies to merely that of messages. Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Starbucks. These companies were the first to realize that alienated consumers don't want products that are technically superior. Indeed, consumers are too anxious and illiterate to know superiority. What consumers really want is to feel good about themselves. Feel cool. Represent their personality. Fit in with their tribe. What Marlboro hadn't realized was that people didn't buy from them because their cancer-stick was any better than the rest. They bought into their _image. It follows from basic business logic that they should focus on the message, sell-off and contract the unimportant.

Our culture has become mediated by images, but these are not even those that we can control. These images are determined by marketers. These people get high off influencing millions, making them think they are better off with goods that are 1% physical and 99% image. It is the image that is expensive, for image is the product. But look at all this user-generated content in the Internet! Not only is it practically free, it's begun to rival even corporate media! Although no one was ready for the invention of the Internet, and the resultant influx of billions of bottom-up bits, these are still catalogued, stored, and delivered for corporate interests.

If we want our work to feel more genuine, we need to cut the strings corporate puppeteers have sown into our limbs. Our muscles may have been atrophied by disuse, but if we want to save culture from capitalism, we must use the blockchain to assemble systems of reputation, payment, and consumption that are fundamentally incompatible with capitalism. That is, incapable of being assimilated once they turn "cool".

The only way of achieving this is total disintermediation. Culture must be taken by the public, once and for all. In the past, culture was always sent forward by private entities, whose interests in some way restricted, or "corrupted", the culture that was produced. While not ideal, I do not think that this was a negative condition. Art, after all, was allowed to flourish (although we will never know how it would have done otherwise (probably worse)). However, as Klein so adeptly argues, the balance has shifted. Brands are now the greatest creators of culture (and profits). Big data lets these private entities gather unparalleled insights about their targets, letting them target the most profitable segments right in their weakest point.

I am no communist. I believe in the free market, and in competition. Technology has now evolved to the point where decentralized, democratic systems can compete with corporations.