Java Grant
1051 Words
After the 1960s, brands had transitioned to new forms of marketing messaging, responding to the developments from the modern; to the new, postmodern consumer. I present the example of Lemon & Paeroa’s (L&P) ‘World Famous in New Zealand Since Ages Ago’ as acting ‘not as cultural blueprints but as cultural resources’ as outlined by Douglas Holt (2002, 83). The campaign exemplifying how brands act as cultural resources by becoming ingredients of self-identity and by extension; a component of identity signalling (Belk, 1988; Berger & Heath, 2007). I.e. rather than tell the consumer that men require a clean shave, a shaving company may advertise the clean-shaven man as a certain type of individual with which consumers wish to align.
The postmodern consumer differentiates from the modern consumer with a sense of cynicism, irreverence, irony, parody and rejection of subjectification by the powerful (Brown, 2008, 21). This is why “in order to serve as valuable ingredients in producing the self, branded cultural resources must be perceived as authentic” (Holt, 2002, 83). Opposing the status quo of modern marketing; in which brands were perceived as authoritative and marketers acted as cultural engineers who control how brands are perceived by the public. While a modern marketing campaign for L&P might have advertised the benefits of drinking L&P over other beverages - perhaps health benefits or a superior can design, World Famous in New Zealand Since Ages Ago as a postmodern marketing campaign negotiates with the consumer an ideological meaning about L&P as a brand by presenting them as having an authentic (non-capitalistic/grassroots) investment in New Zealand culture.
Holt offers four potential methods that marketers use to present bands as “relevant and authentic cultural resources.” These methods were; use of reflexive brand personas, coat-tailing on cultural epicentres, life world emplacement, and stealth branding (2002, 84). The notable pattern of these techniques is an increased focus on who consumes the brand's products rather than the aspects of the product itself. Marketers then capitalise on the who is consuming the brand’s product to encode the value of the product and brand with the identity of the people (influencers) which consume them, enabling consumers to use brands as ingredients of identity signalling.
In “Possessions and the Extended Self” (1988) Belk discusses how consumers use products as an extension of their self (personal identity). Berger & Heath (2007) explain that the identities people create through product consumption (and by extension brand association) are used to infer other aspects of someone's identity. This encoding and decoding of identity through consumption habits resembles Stuart Hall’s reception theory. If the goal of the consumer is to provide other people with the dominant encoding of their identity, which they have encoded into their consumption, then by providing cultural resources through marketing, brands help consumers accomplish this.
In 2005, Lemon and Paeroa launched their World Famous in New Zealand Since Ages Ago advertisement featuring the Australia/New Zealand clothing icon: Stubbies shorts. The campaign utilised a technique similar to life world emplacement; the commercial featured a small group of large men who fit many Kiwi tropes and ideologies; wearing gumboots, having a well-fed stomach (puku), mullets that warded off the sun, and leaving their keys in the car while drinking from cans of L&P. This presentation of the ‘Kiwi man’ as a package containing gumboots, mullets, and L&P acts as an endorsement by the ideology of the ‘Kiwi bloke’. By aligning with our expectations of the ‘Kiwi bloke’, the men in the commercial stand in as authentic influencers for the Kiwi identity.
It is in this way that L&P acts as a cultural resource for both their consumers and the general public, their target consumer: men who strongly associated with looks and behaviours of the late 1900s New Zealand, have been provided with guidelines on how to behave and look (leaving keys in the car and wearing brown stubbies) in order to present (encode) themselves as iconic kiwi men. The general public, on the other hand, has (in the same commercial) been taught to associate the same looks and behaviours as the ‘kiwi bloke’ in order to understand (decode) the identity presented by these men.
The resource that L&P offers is a method of identity communication or signalling that also associates the consumption of L&P beverages with New Zealand’s national identity in order to sell cans of drink as an accessory.
While it might be seen as a cultural gift for brands to provide methods of communication to the public to help individuals express themselves, a brand-orientated approach can be seen from Stuppy, Mead, and Van Osseler and their studies on self-verifying consumption. Consumers can be persuaded to purchase different and even more expensive products than they otherwise would have; if they are convinced the person that would buy that product is “the type of person they are” (15), for example; if a consumer expects a creative-type person to buy expensive coffee, then it is possible to convince the consumer to purchase expensive coffee by convincing them they are a creative-type person.
From this perspective, the postmodern campaign by L&P may not be intended to target people that currently associate strongly with the ‘Kiwi bloke’ characters within the commercial but instead, are intended to convince all New Zealanders that they should associate with these characters - portraying them as the ideal New Zealanders. This perspective still utilises Holt’s understanding of brands as cultural resources and consumer identity signalling theory but also allows an expansion of the consumer base by not limiting it to consumers that already identify with the presented ideologies of the brand, but instead those that can be convinced that they should identify with the brand’s ideologies.
In the transition from modern to postmodern marketing techniques, brands have instead offered ideological packages which are associated with their products for people to wear to signal to others their values and identity. This can be seen both as a tool for members of the public to communicate, but also as a means of control by brands and marketers to convince consumers to categorise themselves into a limited selection of cultural consumer groups.
Belk, Russell W. "Possessions And The Extended Self". Journal Of Consumer Research, vol 15, no. 2, 1988, p. 139. Oxford University Press (OUP), doi:10.1086/209154.
Berger, Jonah, and Chip Heath. "Where Consumers Diverge From Others: Identity Signaling And Product Domains". Journal Of Consumer Research, vol 34, no. 2, 2007, pp. 121-134. Oxford University Press (OUP), doi:10.1086/519142.
Holt, Douglas B. "Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory Of Consumer Culture And Branding". Journal Of Consumer Research, vol 29, no. 1, 2002, pp. 70-90. Oxford University Press (OUP), doi:10.1086/339922.
Stuppy, Anika et al. "I Am, Therefore I Buy: Low Self-Esteem And The Pursuit Of Self-Verifying Consumption". Journal Of Consumer Research, vol 0, 2019, pp. 1-15. Oxford University Press (OUP), doi:10.1093/jcr/ucz029.