8 - ‘Brand culture: trade marks, marketing and consumption’ – responding legally to Professor Schroeder's paper

Summary

Professor Schroeder's chapter on ‘Brand culture’ states that ‘[i]mages – including brand images, corporate images and websites – constitute much corporate communication about products, economic performance and corporate identity’. It concludes that ‘we live in a branded world: brands infuse culture with meaning, and brand management exerts a profound influence on contemporary society’.

To make those points, Schroeder focuses on one sort of image: the photograph. He discusses how advertising uses images, often scanned and altered photographs, to give the advertised product a positive message with which especially adult male consumers can identify and which ultimately persuades them to buy. The ads he presents fall into familiar patterns. They show that a computer is not just a computer, liquor does not just make you drunk, and banks do not just steal your money through the various euphemisms by which your credit with them is progressively reduced. No, just carrying a laptop makes you a man (if you are one genetically; if you're not, then this ad is not for you); liquor makes any nerd attractive to women; and banks and other financial houses are solid citizens who spread democracy worldwide, and who among us would not want to donate our money to them so they could go on doing such good works on our behalf?

Part of the culture in which advertising and brands operate is law. Academic lawyers considering these ads might approach them in various ways, depending on their theoretical interests.