I’m With the Brand by Rob Walker
Constable, £8.99
I WILL never forget just how disappointed I was to hear that the concoction of cheese and chunky bread and pickled onions and salad I enjoyed at the pub was about as connected to the people who plough the fields as the space shuttle.
The ploughman’s lunch, you see, was as nifty an advertising gimmick as Coca-Cola turning Santa Claus from red to green in the 1930s to better advertise their sticky fizzy drink.
Many of us will have had similar moments of epiphany when we realised that our desperate search for street credibility had made us the mugs of the brand managers.
In this entertaining trawl through the clutter of modern living Rob Walker offers some hope to those of us who feel we are at the mercy of the markets.
Walker has written a regular column on modern brands for the New York Times and takes an enlightened attitude to the subject.
He freely admits to being in awe of objects such as the iPod which do only as much as many MP3 players but just look a damn sight better.
But Walker is certainly not a slave to fashion and looks with amusement at how certain fads come and go.
His tales of how consumers adopted items such as Timberland boots or Pabst Blue Ribbon beer (a declining working class lager) and made them their own are instructive.
Salesmen didn’t set this up, they barely managed to cotton on to what was going on before cheerfully reaping the benefits. Often their companies simply couldn’t understand who was buying their products and were even annoyed that it wasn’t “their” ideal kind of customer.
Of course, most marketing is driven from the centre and Walker shows how astute brands have become in trying to promote their products while appearing not to.
It’s a tightrope. No one wants to feel they are being sold to but everyone needs to know what they “must have” to remain
hip.
At the same time, these products evolve and change. Those that are most successful allow people to put their own imprint upon them. For the iPod, for example, create your own playlist.
I’m With the Brand’s breezy and accessible style belies the breadth and depth of Walker’s research. It is a useful addition to the canon on popular culture.
Phil Chamberlain
