Brand BFFs

After this week's discussion, I began to contemplate the consumer's relationship to a brand, particularly those relationships that "establish brands as familiar, essential, even lovable," and how such relationships impact purchasing habits.

The Coppertone girl, for instance, inspires sentiments of fun and family, associated with childhood days at the beach. To me, Coppertone is not a company attempting to sell it's product, but a loving friend that does not want me to burn under the sun and has, hence, created an item to prevent such a misfortune. The genius of marketers is at work here, as sun screen is transformed from a health caution to a nostalgic artifact.

Apple has done a sensational job at establishing themselves as the smarter, cooler, and more innovative option in technology. The brand is personified by this relaxed twenty-something-year-old in jeans and a t-shirt with infinitely more to give than the forty-something, overweight man in a stuffy suit. Even without the dialogue of the commercial, which is ruthlessly pro-mac and explains just how awful PC's are, one is immediately drawn to the Mac person who is, indeed, a "familiar, essential, even lovable" dude with no worries and an amazing computer.

Those damn bears get me every time. It is likely the sheer cuteness of characters that wins us over, inspiring the feelings of soft and cuddly-ness that toilet papers are perpetually trying to associate themselves with. There's nothing threatening whatsoever about a cartoon bear wiping his hiny, and this notion is reflected back onto the customer's perception of Charmin, which is transformed from a company selling a product to a learned friend giving advice about which toilet paper is the most comfortable.

The omnipresence of advertisements, coupled with our impressionable nature, creates endless brand relationships that impact which products we buy over and over again and which we never look twice at.