Commentary

This Video That Describes Branding Will Make You Embarrassed You Work in Advertising

Have you ever tried to explain what you do for work to your relatives? Are you familiar with the perplexed look on their faces when you launch into your buzzword bingo about developing brand essence and personality? Well then, don't show them this video from DBD International's David Brier, which lays it on thicker than any thick you've ever before seen.

Attempting to answer the question "What is branding?," a voiceover prattles on about voice, color, shape, talent, skills, magic, tension, harmony, typography, beauty, simplicity and then goes off on a tangent about seeing as others see before circling back to share what everyone who works in advertising already knows: creative people are geniuses who "have that special skill to look at the universe of people and translate that into the universe of visual and written communications."

Yeah, it's magic. Magic created by geniuses. The magic of branding. It's so magical, in fact, that you don't even need a product to create a brand. You can just grab your wand, work your magic and poof, you have a successful brand.

Part of me wants to trash this approach for being yet another puff piece from yet another creative lunatic and then I remember there's this product called Coke. Yeah, someone -- actually, hundreds over the years, of course -- found a magical way to get shitloads of people to buy caramel-flavored sugar water over and over again even though, time and time again, it has been proven to be bad for you. 

So, yeah, in a way, I guess Brier is right. It's all magic. It's all pulling the wool over people's eyes. Practicing sleight of hand, trickery, chicanery and the art of persuasion that results in people buying and doing things they wouldn't normally do if they weren't influenced by the crap the ad industry peddles on a daily basis. 

But until every product and service is awesome in its own right, we will need marketers and advertising people to perpetrate this deceitful magic, otherwise known as lying, to the masses

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