{"id":85290,"date":"2013-02-07T11:37:42","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T15:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/?p=85290"},"modified":"2013-02-07T11:37:42","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T15:37:42","slug":"dennis-joseph-weekly-branding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/homepage\/columns\/just-dennis\/dennis-joseph-weekly-branding\/","title":{"rendered":"DENNIS JOSEPH WEEKLY: Branding"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dennis Joseph<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are surrounded everyday by big brands from corporations and media on all sides.\u00a0 You are drilled into having the latest pair of\u00a0 Jeans,\u00a0 or\u00a0 perfume.\u00a0 We are told that we need these things or else our lives would be\u00a0 unfulfilled.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fashion promoters revive the same old styles of the older generation and pass these off as modern to the new generation having the youth falling over themselves to get a copy. Advertising and public relations show us the consumers everything we aspire to be, to have or to associate with and branding makes even the same product different from the rest.\u00a0 Media pounds into our brain through the gospel according to this or that brand owner, the exact thing we need to be satisfied and feel good about ourselves<\/p>\n

Advertisers feature beautiful and confident looking people to tell us that if \u201cwe want to be like mike,\u201d we must wear a certain type of clothes, a particular head gear, underwear or a special wrist watch or shave our heads to the point of baldness.\u00a0 If we want to have a\u00a0 thin figure we must go on a brand name diet plan or exercise on a brand name stationary bike.\u00a0\u00a0 We drink sodas, eat KFC and wear Nike everyday of our lives all because of branding.\u00a0 If you doubt that just reflect on the real reason why you are at KFC instead of frying your own chicken or always choose a particular brand of sneakers and swear by it every time.\u00a0 It is simply because the advertising made you do it and not the Devil. To us a certain brand means quality, price and status image.\u00a0 We become walking billboards for the companies with a Lakers cap, a Heineken T-shirt and a pair of New Balance sneakers whilst driving a Toyota Pickup.\u00a0 We advertise New York tourism with \u201cI love NY\u201d caps we actually paid for with hard earned money and the New York tourism department must be gleefully saying, \u201cThank you very much.\u201d.\u00a0 The corporations have cleverly set us up to spend our own money, to purchase the products featuring their names and so we advertise their names\u00a0 and products everywhere we go at our own expense. Even the bus drivers have got into the branding business, christening their 15 seaters with all sorts of names to the point of absurdity and some with a biblical quote cum warning that \u2018No weapon formed against me shall prosper.\u2019\u00a0 To that I say, \u201dExcept the speed that you drive.\u201d<\/p>\n

However branding does not stop at products and things.\u00a0 There is also personal name branding\u00a0 sport\u00a0 in Dominica and since branding has the nasty habit of sticking regardless of the truth of it, whether things change from bad to good or vice versa know this, that once you are branded you remain branded. A drug addict is branded \u2018paro\u201d for life, just like a drunkard or someone who stole money\u00a0 is branded a thief.\u00a0\u00a0 Politicians in particular love to steal away reputations in the tactically held belief that if they are to take you down they must first destroy your name and when they are finished with you everybody brands you as the \u201cbad egg\u201d.\u00a0 They are on safe ground with wild accusations as they have audiences that love to hear a demolition job on the opponents.<\/p>\n

The PM brands some Freedom Party supporters who please him as \u201cclassical\u201d and the others who give him a headache as \u201crebels.\u201d\u00a0 The rebels are still stuck with that brand.\u00a0 Any opposition views is branded with the word \u201ctroublemaker\u201d and the parliamentary opposition is mostly branded as a bunch of failures lurching from one position to the next who have no idea of how to win elections.\u00a0 The justice system is branded unjust, the Speaker of the parliament is branded unfair, and people are finding out that an elected representative can act and be branded as a dictator just like a real one.\u00a0 However none of these compare to the public relations branding job struck up by the coalition of the Labour and Freedom parties to unseat the UWP in the 2000 elections.<\/p>\n

The UWP was shaken to its core with allegations of corruption in government and lost the 2000 elections as a result and is losing ever since.\u00a0 Then as if to add insult to injury, the\u00a0 Labour Party after 2005 elections\u00a0 engineered the floor crossing of the very UWP person they most accused of corruption\u00a0 and then won even bigger 18-3 in 2009.\u00a0 .<\/p>\n

This kind of dubious and even irresponsible branding of 2000 however carries with it serious after effects.. The legacy of accusations of wrongdoing and corruption is now the way, the truth and the key to political life.\u00a0 These days the nation reels every week with new charges of corruption in government.\u00a0 The truth is not necessarily on the table anymore rather it is the branding card that dominates the play.\u00a0 The branding of an ambassador as someone with a certain sexual persuasion may be completely wrong but the brand sticks nonetheless and the ambassador struggles to erase it.\u00a0 Despite the efforts of some to disprove it the new extravagant state house is branded as a\u00a0 waste of money and indeed it is and the Library sits right opposite suffering in its neglect and gazes upon it mournfully. As we draw closer to another election day the branding games afoot and the\u00a0 branding chorus is alive and singing. When all is said and done the voting public\u00a0 brands\u00a0 all political parties as a waste of time,\u00a0 while the politicians brand the voters as talkers who will just grumble for 5 years\u00a0 but will vote for them the same way on election day anyway.<\/p>\n

Listen to audio of column below.<\/p>\n