Caroline Marti - Cultural Mediations of Brands

For any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary. Prediction and control consist in avoiding this subliminal state of Narcissus trance. (McLuhan 1964, p. 48)

This reminder highlights this dynamic of an untiring quest for a hold that is quick to be exercised in many forms. The apparent communicative entropy can temporarily make you forget the focus, the obsession of the hold.

The other evidence to be distanced and linked to the first, is the naturalization of an anthropomorphization: “the will to control brands” suggests that these entities are endowed with an autonomy, an ability to exist and want.

Brands are more represented and evoked in professional and vernacular speech as creatures than creations, thus, by this naturalization, masking the conditions of their elaboration to designate themselves as entities that are self-evident. This anthropomorphization is reflected in the evocation of brands as subjects and not as objects, in personalizations and metaphors: you can be a fan of a brand, be a friend on Facebook with it, etc.

Behind the brand, a body of professionals works 7, coordinates, and acts for it, but the dominant representation is that of a living and active entity. The phenomena observed reinforces the idea that there is obviously no real enunciation in commercial mediation, but rather a construction of enunciation, without the enunciator being an analog of the issuer.

Brandsare always constructions and the fruits of enunciative polyphonies. They are semiotic entities thanks to aggregates of signs, chosen for capitalization, to produce symbolic and financial capital. However, the power of meaning of trademarks can only be expressed when they are included in mediations over which they have only discontinuous control, as we will see in the following chapters.

The challenge of the cultural figurations I mention is to make brands appear to be mediators, by placing them in cultural mediation modes that are located and socially connoted. The mediations orchestrated by professional brand managers, with the collaboration of certain cultural actors, are organized around brands as if they were entities with an identity and, beyond, as if they were authors. However, brands are semiotic entities that are part of mediations decided and directed by their managers 8.

The masking of the production of statements to substantiate an enunciation by the notion of brand is the very foundation of brand strategies. To give an idea, we could reduce this phenomenon to that of the invisible person moving puppets or ventriloquists who animate a lifeless form using gestures and words they attribute to it. This masking is inherent in the “fictionalization” of brands, in their manufacturing of a discourse capable of convincing and encouraging adherence. The coherence of this discourse is suspended by the homogenization of the enunciations that produce it. The work of homogenization erases the asperities specific to a particular enunciator, erases any tensions to produce a form that is at least assertive if not clear and univocal.

The “rise of brands” in recent decades seems to me to be directly related to the multiple, sometimes paradoxical, injunctions made to companies that must be, at the same time, sustainable, financially efficient for their shareholders, socially responsible, good employers and respectful of their environment, etc. These injunctions and constraints, which are more or less integrated, are perceived within companies in the paradoxes of decision-making and discourse, in the tensions between entities and departments, in the media coverage to which they are subject.

The production of a logo, a graphic charter, and a linguistic charter is revealing of this imperative concern for a compensatory discourse. This discourse must be stabilized, capable of being stated, and disseminated in order to be given to consume and believe.

For reasons of clarity, however, I will sometimes refer to trademarks as if they were such subjects, as I did for the title of this book, and I will speak, for example, of “brand communication”. But I will avoid this shortcut when possible, even if it means making the subject even more cumbersome by talking about brand professionals or a built brand. In any case, let the reader not be fooled.

The cultural proposalsto which I attach great importance are indeed initiatives designed to foster control and strengthen the power of brands. While the function is not obvious, it is clear, but the nature of this power is not; the point of my remarks is to clarify it. How would cultural figurations strengthen the power of brands? More precisely, how do cultural figurations configure regimes of authority in the public space that would be attractive to brand professionals?

Reformulation of the question reduces the spectrum of what it embraces and reflects renunciations and choices about the scope of the research that will follow: it will not be a question of effects on audiences, but rather of the construction of possible effects. Approaching audiences would undoubtedly be exciting, but this is not the perspective chosen, as it would require other fields and theoretical approaches. On the other hand, the approach chosen promises particular attention to the representations of professionals and the connotations of social and cultural forms. The reduction also concerns the shift from the term “power” to “authority”. One is different from the other and encompasses it, as we will see later.

This comment on the question raised is not yet complete, however, because the terms chosen encourage, by their imprecision, continued reflection. How can speaking in the public space confer authority on brands? What is authorityand how can we define the cultural to which I refer? The answer to these questions will be developed precisely by addressing the articulation of concepts throughout the book and beyond by showing how, in this context, they are constituted jointly.

But this presents some notable difficulties.

The first difficulty lies in the complexity of each concept, which have been the subject of approaches by many authors, from various disciplines, over the centuries and decades. This wealth of work can be considered a godsend, but it makes it difficult to deal with concepts. There will therefore be no exhaustive point of view on each notion and their approach will be based on the need to show the links and the preferred perspective.

The perspective will be deliberately communicative, with a strong sensitivity to the semiotic and metamorphic aspects of communication, captured in context, because forms exist only in the socio-techno-economic processes that frame them, captured over time, but also in minds. The forms of communication are in fact the emanation of representations that are sometimes ambivalent, sometimes in confrontation, depending on the groups that generate, value, and mobilize them. The same form can be justified by speeches from very different, even antagonistic perspectives. Finally, this communicational perspective is part of a perspective that values the order of circulationand elaboration to the detriment of an essentialism of forms and representations. This fixing would have its virtues, especially operational, but it is not my objective, my approach being that of deconstruction and objectivity and not that of a particular constructivism for the benefit of an actor or overall an optimization of market activities.

On this subject, my purpose is not to improve the practices of market actors and the examples chosen are not because they are successes or failures; the examples are chosen according to their communicative density, because they seem to me to be emblematic of a particular phenomenon or process.