Exhibit #1: ABC TV news, Sunday night, item about the Waratahs coach Ewen McKenzie, whose contract hasn’t been renewed. There’s a quick grab from McKenzie saying he’s proud to leave the Waratahs in better shape than he found them, they are a great “brand”.
Funny, I thought they were a football team.
Exhibit #2: ABC radio, Monday, PM program, a light item about the runaway success of Where is the Green Sheep?, a play for under-fours. Interviews with the director and an actor are followed by a bit of discussion about the similar appeal of the Wiggles and Bananas in Pyjamas and then the reporter asks a chicken and egg question about where their popularity comes from: “Do the children ask for these products or…”
Products? I thought they were performers/performances.
Exhibit #3: ABC TV news again, another story about another football team brand “franchise” whose coach is leaving. Here’s the same interview: “He was confident he left the franchise in good heart, said he had no regrets and adamant that his successor had to come from within the franchise.”
Doesn’t he mean “club”?
Well in the case of S14 and the A-League they really are privately owned franchises, as are some of the NRL sides. It’d be a bit remiss to pretend otherwise.
I have also noticed “damaging the Liberal brand”.
I know it’s nerve jarring stuff … In the same Orwellian vein as “Humbled” as a substitute for “proud”. I knew we were well trapped in Newspeak when Howard started saying “I am humbled”, but didn’t use it to describe being beaten by Maxine!
Let’s face it, when it comes to “brand”, merchandising is “What it’s all about” - as (if we think about it a while) we’ve all known for decades. Girl Guides probably started it with their biscuits!
How long ago did universities take up selling merchandise (at least 49 years for UQ)? Look at your banner - Gough in a 1972 “It’s Time” Tee-shirt! (Brendan & NewsLtd could always blame Gough!) Even then, political parties & unis were flogging “Branded” wine (usually port) - it sold better than chook raffles, and didn’t stand on the toes of ambos, footballers etc who liked to think they’d cornered the chook-raffle market. How long have schools been selling “branded” chocolates, ports wine glasses - any amount of merchandise with the logo?
Everyone’s in on it! No sooner does Indiana Jones ride again, than Qld’s Golden Casket Office has IJ “scratchies” with IJ prizes, and kids’ gift-givers can buy IJ Lego sets! B1 & B2 make the ABC a packet in merchandising, and Kevin07 T-shirts sold so well there were WEEKS delay in filling orders. Even Crikey.com is into merchandising.
“Branding” is so bad that people even PAY (in come cases MANY thousands of dollars) to display advertising matter about their person - on T-shits & polos, buttons, shoes & bags; even jewellery. No sooner did the big multi-nationals buy out some of the world’s luxury (and formerly very discreet) brands than even people who should have known better took up this bad-taste habit (even Princess Di, who dangled DIOR in 4 big gold letters from her handbag).
I can’t stand “Brand” as a synonym for “series”, “team”, “party”, “act” … whatever. But (good causes excepted) I don’t do commercial advertising under the guise of clothing, accessories etc either. But I am an OAP, so I guess I’m now “old fashioned”. Damn!
As soon as it’s a ‘product’ you can apply the corporate mentality to them and therefore do almost anything that’s good for the ’shareholders’ regardless of any previous moral or ethical responsibility.
Business success has become the measure of success which overrides all others. In these times of ‘individuality’ how else are you going to measure yourself? It’s either dollars, facebook friends or website hits.
Just ‘doing the right thing’ has gone the way of the dodo in the western world.
Onimod, funny you should mention that, I was just skimming through Content Monthly…
As a public servant, I once got some very puzzled looks when I questioned why on earth our Department has a ‘business plan’ I thought ‘businesses’ make money, we just spend it.. don’t we??
4 Leinad
sorry - I think I’m lost in the sarcasm cloud; should I be?
I heard the recent downpours in Brisbane described (I don’t remember who committed this crime, sadly) not as “rain”, but as a “rain event“.
Antony Loewenstein today posted this interesting link on Libertarian capitalism and the post-socialist age. Well worth a read.
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=282121&cid=20392295
http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/Humor/MBAWriter/
Suzanne.
Sounds better than a rain situation
Jacques, thanks for those links. The MBA Writer would be right at home in my workplace.
I remember being struck by the Victorian police use of the term ‘customer’ when I was making inquiries about their ethical standards dept. Maybe labeling laws could be applied to them in some contentious riot situations. They could all wear large, sewn on individual fluro numbers and letters front and back.
As a side benefit this would help cut down on endemic theft in police stations.
Many democratic and libertarian socialists describe themselves as anti-capitalists and I always suggest the best way to end corrupt crony capitalism is to kick away its least popular props - god and the state. Then we might move to a new sustainable socialist paradigm - one with few possessive nouns. ( Apart from the ego and its own)
Anarchism and democratic-socialists in-the-main have the best brands on the free political market… so long as are not adulterated with any red-fascist poisoning.
When CEO of Fairfax, Fred Hilmer used to describe his journalists as “content providers for advertising platforms”, which I guess is what they are in a market fundamentalist sense of the world.
[I remember being struck by the Victorian police use of the term ‘customer’ when I was making inquiries about their ethical standards dept. Maybe labeling laws could be applied to them in some contentious riot situations. They could all wear large, sewn on individual fluro numbers and letters front and back.
As a side benefit this would help cut down on endemic theft in police stations.]
And I’ve noticed in Disability Services we people like myself are referred to as “Clients”, not members of the organsiation.
And Centrelink calls welfare recipients its “customers”. I may be old fashioned but to me “customer” implies an entirely different relationship. Or maybe Myer has started imposing hoops to be jumped through before they’ll let you buy something and I just haven’t noticed.
Another insidious aspect of the commodification of everything is that various relationships in our lives, which used to be mediated by affection and respect now all involve commercial transactions. Sporting events which used to be voluntary are now are primarily commercial, child care which used to (not even exist) but be shared between communities and households is now commercial. Most cultural output, entertainment, etc etc Most facets of our lives involves some sort of commercial transactions and relationships between people are being facilitated by by monetary transactions. Big companies look for the lifetime relationships that they can maintain with consumers. Hell we are no longer even people we are ‘consumers’. If you think about the implications of that title ‘consumers’ its pretty unsettling.
I can’t find the quote from nick Minchin, I think in a speech to the Sydney Institute where he fleshed out how he thought workchoices hadn’t gone far enough.
I think he referred to people as “single economic units”, but I’d like the exact quote in front of me to be sure - can anyone help?
Anyway, the general intent is almost the ultimate in commodification - life itself is a transaction.
Whenever I hear the words “Mission Statement”, I reach for my Browning …
I’m just reading Don Watson’s Death Sentence, and it’s pretty spot-on for this kind of thing. That is to say, the broad-based structural resonances of his product will provide strong linguistic learning utilities going forward.
It all started with the now commonplace Human Resources. No less odious for being so ubiquitous!
Rugby Union lost me as “growing market” when the Super-12’s went “franchise” mode and they became SO obsessed with “branding” that I could never work out who was playing who.
Gone are the days of Queensland vs NSW - we now have “the Blues vs the Crusaders”. I keep expecting to see NSW playing against … well, actually I still have no idea who the Crusaders are. I used to think the Highlanders were from South Africa (instead of NZ) because I kept picturing Tabletop Mountain in Jo-burg (etc, etc, etc).
The same was true of the “Sheffield Shield” (sorry, Pura Cup - geez, what a crappy name for a competition) and the use of idiot names for the State Teams. I still hardly know who’s playing who in these matches as well.
Unless you’re a rabid supporter, these names mean nothing to Joe Public and rather than drag me in, they tend to frustrate me and turn me off them…
I read a film review of the recent remake of the St Trinian’s film in which the presumably 20-something reviewer referred to the original “1960s franchise”. It wasn’t a franchise, it was a series. Aaargh!
Suzanne @7, considering the time between showers in SA, I think it’s an apt description.
Tallyrand, Napoleon’s devious Foreign Minister, observed that one of the functions of government is inventing new names for institutions and ideas which have become odious.
I think George Orwell noted something similar in his essay “Politics and the English Language”. What used to be the preserve of politicians has spread via Business Schools to managerialism and from managerialism back to politics. The circle of bullshit is complete.
In mental health the oft used term is ‘consumers’.