Branding

Wanna play a game? OK, great. I will show you a brand name and you tell me what it is selling--sing the jingle if you know it.
Ready?

by....mennen

softens hands while you do dishes

milk's favorite cookie

Cinch-y, right? Let's check:

a whole line of baby products, in fact

yep, it's shampoo every time

delicious in their own way--but--what?

Branding can be kind of a big deal. I recently saw an online discussion working out the logo for a kid's birthday party. We even use the word "branding" to broaden the topic of  "brand names" to suggest that it all goes much deeper than just a designation. Companies spend fortunes to make sure we have a whole host of associations pop in our minds when we hear that jingle, or see that symbol.

These products weirded me out a little bit--because they went against my expectations. There are a million things that are different in Nicaragua than in the U.S. but they don't seem as unsettling as this almost familiar but different-ness. Because when I read that familiar brand name, I thought I knew what to expect.

It has really made me think about the brand names I wear--and how that shapes the way people perceive me. We all wear bunches of brand names--demographic ones, political ones, religious ones--but what if they are "read" differently by different people? And what assumptions am I making about others based on my expectations from that brand?

Perhaps it's so striking to me, because it's so close. If you asked me to describe these Oreo's I would say "a crunchy chocolate cookie with vanilla creme" and you would, too--but we'd be visualizing two different things.

Maybe it's that same way with the cultural brands we wear. It may be close--but  it also may bring up very different perceptions for each of us when we hear Christian, father, democrat, gringo, conservative, sister, senior, evangelical, middle-class, pastor, missionary...you get where I'm going.

Each day in the shower as I use my Palmolive shampoo, I am reminded that I need to "look inside the bottle" with people and not just read the brands. They may not mean what I think.