There has been a bit of restructuring of my research, helping me to organise my thoughts and development; branding a conceptual idea such as materialism would only provide a form that can be so fluid and more must be interpreted within it to reach the outcome. It is also helpful as it helps me create a running order for the imminent Major Project Presentation next week. The idea of negativity and positivity still sits well in my mind, but would I be able to make a change by utilising the psychological research that I have found and focus on consumerism as the one aspect of society? How would I be able to utilise today’s brand terrorism, i.e. the bombardment of brands so that we are never too far away from them, or any other brands, to promote something positive?
Going through the research that I have done for the past few months has made me realise very much that I was better defining my boundaries within my research; children specifically as a target audience was not relevant in my interests, but rather the concepts that are inherent in children’s fairytales. The adult consumer is nowadays stuck in fictional narratives that are influenced by the concepts of fantasy within branding.
The power of brands is by no means weak; the ability of being able to provide a narrative that merges between the fantastical and the real is beginning to morph social norms of understanding the difference between spiritualistic desires (such as freedom, love, health) with materialistic needs; brand narrative aims to offer the fulfilment of spiritualistic desires by purchasing their product of a materialistic nature; the didactic nature that used to be carried by fairytales, however, was not brought along with the creation of branding. The difference between good and bad within the climate of branding is nowadays, so blurred to the point where, its consequences as it morphed social norms has changed our own ideals, as shown with the climatic example of the London Riots.
It is on the realisation based on this quote by Dieter Rams:
The value, and especially the legitimisation of design will be, in the future, measured more in terms of how it can enable us to survive…on this planet.
The in depth research of anything and everything about psychological behaviours when exposed to brands has almost made me forget that the brand itself does not have to be about a logo marque, as I began exploring the outcome possibilities. This project output is rather about the expression of a concept that makes the statistics, or research that I found, fresh for the reader.
From all the gathered research, my research question now stands at:
Is it possible to utilise brand terrorism to encourage good?
Under this research question, the outcome direction will utilise the psychological effects and impact that I have discovered between brands and the consumer to address the social issue of brand terrorism through metaphors as found throughout my research.
