Brands: Companies, Celebrities, Religions, and Us

For brands, we often think of Apple, the Nike Swoosh, and North Face, but do we ever think of people themselves as brands? When you’re a celebrity or YouTube star, does there come a point where you become a brand to sell yourself or your image? I want to explore how brands are themselves unique and universally recognized: a symbol that jumps out but is easily latched onto. As Einstein in her essay points out, intimacy is key to creating a sense of community for different brands. Brands want to foster “shared experiences, the development of myths, and the acting out of rituals” to gain a relationship with their constituents (Einstein 92). Intimacy with a higher power, whether that be God or celebrities in our culture, is something that both global markets and world religions have sought to achieve. Brands function as consumeristic icons: they help identify not only the company, but the people themselves who want to associate themselves with it.

Former Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter recently spoke at Hamilton College and he was asked about how he felt about the media and his role in it. He gave a perplexing response: A brand is who you are inside, how you want to be, while your image is what you want people to see you as or how they see you. It’s intriguing how he sees a brand as being more authentic to his true identity. 

Now, I don’t think it’s odd to think “how do people see me?”  I think evolutionarily, it's an innately human response to compare ourselves to others, as Laderman mentions. But do we often think of crafting our identity? In Generation Like, the film focuses on how people choose certain profile pictures to project an image of themselves and what they like: what brands do they enjoy and how can industries learn to target them? If we like and endorse certain brands, we enter in a community that validates not only that  product, but ourselves.

Through social media and communications with brands, we enter into a feedback-loop with members of the community endorsing the product. I buy mickey ear stickers and put them on my bedroom wall and I post Disney trailers on Facebook because I want people to know I love Disney. I know at the core they’re animated films, but I have willingly bought into the myths they tell, and I ritualistically watch their new movies because I am devoted to the brand. In our culture, we walk around as walking advertisements for other brands to brand ourselves. I want to be part of the Disney, Catholic, Amazon community because it gives me the power and ability to craft my own brand.

The famous YouTube star, Miranda Sings, has completely branded her personality. Her red lipstick, hair pins, tucked in shirt and crazy voice and attitude are widely recognizable across college campuses. This person branded herself as a crazy character that has gained a cult-like following, and from this, we can see that you can brand yourself for something you really aren’t. But as followers of Miranda, we impersonate this impersonation. There’s a sense of community of those who know her jokes and distinct voice.

I think there’s a distinction celebrities, companies, and religions have between us followers, as much as we want to interact with them and brand ourselves. These major conglomerates need a single picture, package, et cetera so that a wide range of people can adapt it as their own. We, on the other hand, can have many different brands be a part of us, which makes us “unique” (or as unique as these markets lead us to believe.) We pick and choose what brands we want on our billboard, consciously or not, and by doing so, try to brand our “true” identities. As Doulas Atkin writes, these sacred and profane brands “are being bound by the essential desires of human nature, which seeks satisfaction wherever it can” (Einstein 90). We seek satisfaction in verification, and sometimes, a Nike swoosh or Mickey ears verifies we’re part of something simple and so much more.

Brands, Religion, and Social Media

In Brands of Faith, Mara Einstein states “branding is about making meaning- taking the individual aspects of a product and turning them into more than the sum of their parts.” This connects to social media, because as demonstrated in the movie “Generation Likes,” kids are creating their own brands through social media forums, like Facebook, YouTube, and instagram. There are the less intense examples, like the kids sitting around trying to carefully construct their facebook pages. This brings up the question, do these social media forums allow people to demonstrate their true self? The answer, in my opinion, is no, because they are controlling what aspects of their personality the public can see. This careful construction avoids showing flaws, which is a key aspect of someone’s true self. However, then you have the more extreme examples, like Tyler Oakley, or the eight-year-old skateboarding YouTube star, who takes his identity as a skate boarder and turns it into a somewhat crude and pornographic image. He creates this image because he know it is what will get him the most views because its what the public wants to see. That is the key to branding and marketing. Companies are constructing products in a way that will help them gain profits and customer loyalty. In the sense of kids and social media, “likes” are forms of profits. Those who gain so many likes are the ones who are wealthiest in the social media world because people are receptive to the things they post. That’s why the face presented on social media is not a true self, because kids are putting up the things they think people will be receptive to, not what they actually like. That shows how similar social media and branding really are.

This “reliance on brands for identity stems from a sense of rootlessness.” This is where religion comes in. Religion was created, originally as a simple cult, in order to bring people together and provide them with a community. That, as Eisntein states in the book, is the same reason for the creation of brands. Brands give people something to share and to form a community over. Brands, like mythologies, work together to create a sense of wholeness from society.