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4. Branding Politics: Shopping for Change?
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|| 125 4 BRANDING POLITICS SHOPPING FOR CHANGE? People seek authenticity because no one wants to be a means to someone else’s end. Yet marketing is all about a means to an end. And in a world where manipulation is omnipresent—on our cell phones, our email in-boxes, our shopping carts, our kids’ schools and so forth—the immutable law of supply and demand makes authenticity increasingly precious. However, if your enterprise is part of the culture of social responsibility, then authenticity is something you get free with the price of admission (i.e., your commitment). —Jerry Stifelman, Treehugger.com In the fall of 2010, the nonprofit company Free2Work.org launched a new iPhone application. The phone app, Free2Work, grades companies based on their commitment to offering a living wage for workers and a democratic work environment. The press release for the new app reads: Become a conscious consumer. This holiday season, you can support companies working to end slave labor in supply chains as you shop your favorite brands. See how apparel companies like Gap and Levi’s compare. Check out hot toy companies like Fisher Price, Lego, LeapFrog and Pillow Pets. Use the information on chocolate and other ingredients to help ensure your holiday meal is slave-free.1 The connection Free2Work makes between the use of an iPhone application (which can only be used on an iPhone) and the promise that one’s holiday meal will be “slave-free” is fairly easy to characterize as ludicrous or, at the least, hypocritical. It is tempting to say, that is, that this iPhone app is an 126 || BrAnding Politics obvious example of a manipulative attempt by corporations such as the Gap and Levi’s to attach their products to progressive politics. It is hard to miss the irony of an Apple iPhone app that promotes “slave-free” politics given the recent publicity over Apple’s deplorable sweatshop labor practices overseas.2 It is also easy to critique the reductive idea that “authenticity” is a kind of product , “free with the price of admission” through one’s commitment. Throughout this book, however, I have argued against this temptation, and against thinking about today’s capitalist culture as merely an ever-richer context for traditional and emergent forms of corporate appropriation. The notion that we can fight against global slave labor by using an iPhone app (to help us shop, no less!) surely makes that temptation all the more, well, tempting. Yet, it remains important to not settle for this kind of critique, for yet another binary that opposes corporate appropriation and some vague ideal of progressive politics. Rather, we must think more deeply about how this iPhone app is representative of a branded politics. In the 21st-century US, it is clear that social and political action, cultural resistance, and political identities are often attached to merchandising practices, market incentives, and corporate profits. Within this context, Free2Work makes logical sense as an “authentic” form of politics. More significantly, this iPhone app is but one example of political practice in a transformative moment: the US is witnessing , and participating in, a shift from “authentic” politics to the branding of politics as authentic. We can see the branding of politics perhaps most vividly on the stage of electoral politics. The early 21st century, after all, is the era of the “Obama brand”; many argue that the first “digital president” was elected due to the complex branding of Obama, achieved primarily through social media and new technologies. This is also the historical moment where former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin has a reality television show that promises to reimagine and revitalize the “Republican brand” (also framed as “the American spirit”). Branding politics has likewise become increasingly common in the corporate world, particularly through the practice of corporate social responsibility , in which corporations use a social issue (such as environmental concern or poverty) as a platform not only to sell products but also to further their brand. Dove’s clever use of soap as a vehicle to talk about positive body image and negative beauty culture (and, implicitly, about how its products can enhance the former and reduce the latter) is just one of innumerable examples. Arguably, in order to be a viable political presence in contemporary US culture, one must craft a successful political brand. It has been my argument throughout Authentic™ that the emergence of brand culture in the contemporary moment means that realms of culture [3.235.130.73] Project MUSE...