What Did You Buy Into Today? Essay -- Advertising Media Papers

What Did You Buy Into Today? Take a look at your shoes. Check the breast of the shirt you are wearing. Don’t forget the ass of your pants. What about the food you ate for lunch or the computer you typed your paper on? There is no denying that we are living in a brand name life. People have become consumers whether they’ve wanted to or not. It is impossible to walk through life without being bombarded by image after image of a branded identity. From Nike to McDonald’s, Apple to Evian, the â€Å"brand† has worked its way into consumer consciousness on a level that has not been seen in the past. Humans strive for individuality, so how did we so willingly give ourselves over to the brands that now consume us? A common misconception about branding is that branding and advertising are both one in the same. This, however, is not the case. Advertising is only one key component that a company uses to create their own branded image; an image that encompasses everything the company wants the public to know about the meaning of its products. Advertising is just an outlet to get that message across. â€Å"Branding† is a by-product of a society that has too many similar products, a natural occurrence in a free-market capitalist country. The goal of branding is to separate one similar product from another by altering the way that a consumer feels about a certain product at a sub-conscious level. For instance, a marketing campaign common to almost all of us tries to create a distinction in our mind between Coke and Pepsi. To do this, brand makers will work to infiltrate their target market and create an image for the product that closely resembles the image of the target market, thus burning i n the idea that their product is an important aspect of so... ...Nike swoosh being altered to resemble a gun shooting the high soaring basketball player. The results are quick and effective, and spread to others outside your immediate sphere of influence. The more you expose the underlying meaning of the ads around us the more people will think about all the ads and marketing pushes that coincide with their life. It’s time to once again reclaim your life as your own. Question the images put before you. Urge others to do the same. Support independent retail outlets and companies that still produce the products that they are selling to you. If you must buy branded products, purchase them second hand. If there’s a mass exodus away from the cash registers of these branded pseudo companies then the tides will change and we’ll see our lives return to us as they once stood, uninterrupted and full with a passion for living once again.