Description

Chris Cox Honours thesis.

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Abstract:


This paper argues that peoples’ lives and experiences are socially constructed, and that social constructs are linguistic-social constructs; as such brands are cultural-linguistic constructs (memes) whose goal is to dominate the discourses within which they are involved. The importance of that is that they cannot act as objects communicating outwards, but as evolving self-designed mental entities designed to prosper in a specific environment (just as their physical counterparts would). The world of human social interaction and social hierarchy are ones embedded in language; humans (and now brands) make use of sophisticated ‘technologies of the self’ in order to control the ways in which they interact and are perceived to be interacting in this milieu; brands as memes however require human hosts and must ensure that they understand the various factors and resulting techniques that will best enable them to survive and replicate.


As a result this paper argues from the basis of myriad social science sources that brands stand to benefit by reframing their understanding of reality accordingly. First brands must ensure that they not only have deep and authentic identities that (at least purport to) extend well beyond profit-making, but that they must also engineer interaction with audiences that drives audiences ever-deeper into the reality of the brand, all the while their communication, especially all of those factors that register below the level of conscious perception but nonetheless shift people’s perceptions of an interaction, must communicate this identity authentically. Second, brands stand to benefit by engaging critically in audience-communication, understanding first and foremost the intrinsic sense-making mechanisms of individuals and the rules that govern social interactions in deeming actions ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’ and assigning value, and the techniques to leverage these. Third, brands can benefit by realising how they can achieve the dominance and control of a discourse, by understanding how to select and nurture niche markets into the mainstream, by controlling the shared understanding and experience of the discourse by all parties involved, by making use of specific techniques in regulating, equalising and even creating power relations, by making use of specific techniques in order to achieve ascendancy over competitors, and finally by engineering and subverting discourses around a brand.