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July 2007 
Brands rule .. what's going on?!
Michele
Once upon a time, a company that wanted to associate its brand with a certain strain of popular culture would sponsor an event, or advertise in a magazine that catered to the people of that culture. Now .... brands are the culture. In the 60s we did not use TV to tell us who we were and our movement was REAL ... it actually came from inside of us. Sick of the War and the status quote we (the hippie boomers) did almost everything different! Man, I long to feel that and see that shared passion again. The excitement of doing something that has never been done and really attempting to change the world for good. We weren’t sheep!
Sadly, today I see a lot of people doing and being exactly what the big marketing machine dictates. Kids acting like what they see on TV, not dictating who they are, allowing media and greedy companies to tell them who they are.
Here’s the cycle - marketing goes out and looks for and studies the few trendsetting kids (or goes to Japan to study little japanese girls on the street) then they go back and make their products and media to copy and exploit what they saw on their marketing field trip. Kids watch the media, adopt it and basically feed the behavior right back to the media on all the reality shows and MTV specials. Guess who profits from it all? It’s a big downward spiral for the rest of us. Big companies profit, society sinks and for the kids it’s a loose-loose proposition.
DON’T buy into it!!! Where are the protests, where is the authentic life ... throw out your TV and try to interpret life in an atmosphere of ‘actual reality’, It’s cool to have stuff if YOU want it it’s cool to be free, just make sure you know who YOU are.
peace - michele
Access: Public
