I Am My Brand (Ma Marque, C’est Moi)

Posted: July 21st, 2010 | Filed under: Culture, Ruminations | 1 Comment »

There was a time when a fellow could adopt a nickname of some sort, and it would be just that.

A nickname. Puff Daddy. (Or, if you prefer P. Diddy.)

A moniker. The Splendid Splinter.

An affectation. Lady Gaga.

Or, say, the Culture Maven, to use one very handy example.

No more.

Turns out I’m now a brand. Just like Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

Who knew?

And no different than Kleenex®.

Or Coke®.

Or Chevy.

Oh, wait a sec. Didn’t GM announce recently that it was eschewing the use of the shortened Chevy, pushing instead the more formal and official Chevrolet®. So customers won’t be confused about the brand. Or, so they believe.

It seems to me that Chevy is pretty ubiquitous. There are songs about this most famous of American cars.

Treat me like ya Chevy/ You can show me off.

Or,

26’s on my chevy (my chevy)/ Chrome on my chevy (my chevy)/ Candy on my chevy (my chevy)/ Flakes on my chevy (oooh)/ Dudes on my chevy (my chevy)/ Girls in my chevy (my chevy)/ Screens in my chevy (my chevy)/ Shove in my chevy/ I’m so hiiiiiiigh/ I’m so hiiiiiiigh

Okay, maybe lyrics like those are why some doofus in the Iron Belt, sitting legs up behind a desk, with too much time on his hands and way too much say so in GM corporate affairs, wants to drive Chevy off the levee.

But I digress.

My point is to decry the commercialization of, well, just about everything.

U of L basketball used to be a program. Now it’s a brand. So proclaims CEO Rick Pitino.

Kinda like Yum!®. Which, in case you haven’t heard, bought the naming (Read: branding) rights to the new arena where the Cardinals® will play starting next season.

We’ve sure come a long way since some wary rancher burned a symbol on the hindquarters of his whole herd, to psychologically ward off rustlers. (Quick aside having very little to do with this rant: The slyest rustler film ever made is “Rancho Deluxe” featuring Slim Pickens as Henry Beige, Cattle Detective.) The word itself comes from German, meaning “to burn.”

The term evolved to designate the identity of a certain product, business or service. So says Wikipedia. Which brand stands for the place we go to find an immediate answer for any question.

But now schools and teams and people are brands.

Most especially King LeBron®.

And, sigh, me too.

I sit here drinking my Heine Brothers brand coffee, typing away on my MacBook brand laptop, writing a piece to appear on my culturemaven.com brand blog.

(When I first registered the name, these things were still called websites. Now they’re branded blogs. But, hey, don’t get me started on the evolution of that appellation.)

So, you get my point. I find this whole branding thing a bunch of bunk, a trend most heinous.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Truth in Advertising Caveat: My name is Chuck Kaplan, actually Charles David Kaplan. I only started calling myself c d kaplan when I began writing professionally. Am I being duplicitous? You decide.

Guess I’m double branded?

Oh well, double your pleasure, double your fun.®©™

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