 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
BLOGS
Links: local area political directory
|
Blog
(12/12/08) THE MARKETPLACE AND THE AUTOMOBILE About a decade ago, Naomi Klein wrote the book that first made her famous, called No Logo, in which among other things, she extends the whole hollowed out US corporation concept to a description of a system in which much of what is done stateside is marketing and branding. Branding, she says a process not just of assigning brand names, but of connecting a whole set of unconscious and conscious mental processes to that brand name and to the various images and sensate perceptions that go with it. For the companies, she says, that "opted for marketing over value every time,....the ostensible product was mere filler for the real production: the brand." Of course, there has been over the years an avalanche of books about advertising, as well as books about the postindustrial society. But, I don't think that anybody was ever quite able to capture the flavor of the US economy in the last decade of the 20th century, as adroitly as she did. (Nor update the trends in offshore production, particularly in China, as well, either.) It all even works wonderfully for talking about political marketing, as that's exactly what we do with politicians running for office, instead of issues, we have branding of who the candidate is, and association of him with various ideologies, persons both good and bad, and so on. Like an eight second sound bite, linking Obama with Bill Ayers, for example. Sarah Palin came out with a whole huge mound of such sound bites. Or, a candidate can be linked forever with a bill he voted against, saying that because he voted against that, he is really against a certain interest group that supported it. This can be done, of course, even if the candidate voted against the measure because he wanted a much stronger one. The product that brought this to true fruition, and did so much earlier than is the case with even most other products, is the automobile, where each make and model is branded. There is a similar inversion there in which the tactile actually existent car is almost incidental to the brand. 95% of customers are 99% ignorant of anything about the vehicle itself, and that hardly enters into the decision, except in what the customer might have seen on TV or in a magazine or a favorite uncle or other opinion leader said about it. What really counts and provides an awful lot of the motivation is everything from sex to anticipation of the lifestyle it might fit into. People bought SUVs that they never took off the road and that had a completely clean underbody indicative of the complete lack of off-road use. But ownership of the SUV is supposed to express the idea that said owner is in charge and ready for anything. Of course, some people bought them for the safety that they felt they couldn't get in smaller cars. Nobody
ever does a comparison between the remuneration of those who make
the product compared to those who create the brand, when it comes
to the auto or any other product/brand. But I'm willing to bet cold
hard cash against stale donuts that it would yield some interesting
results. Of course, we would have to compare hours on the job, as
well as total take, even though now I would guess that compulsory
overtime in auto is at a low point compared to most other times
in the last few decades. But the comparison, it seems to me, would
be one kind of answer to those Republican Senators who last night
set the auto bailout back if not killed it outright, in the interest
of doing a little union busting while they served in what's been
called the millionaire's club. (If union workers are to be paid
the same as nonunion ones, what happens to the union?) For
those who have been cheering ever since Daniel Bell wrote The
Coming of the Post Industrial Society in the '70's, I have a
final word. The three decades since then will at some point have
put the finishing touches on the end of the empire. A country that
has no actual products on which to trade will eventually have nothing
left but the bs it used to command its by then former lofty height.
We know that assembly is going everywhere else in the endless search
for cheap labor, but we seem ignorant of the fact that advanced
manufacturing has gone to another set of countries. Comments and questions should be forwarded to information |