In order to keep a roof over our heads, so to speak, we infuse brands with meaning. But what happens to that meaning post-infusion? How is it transferred (if it is) to the people it was made for?
According to BusinessWeek, University of Minnesota researchers Deborah Roedder John and Ji Kyung Park are studying the matter.
One of the four studies they conducted found that women who carried a Victoria’s Secret shopping bag in a local mall for an hour perceived themselves as more feminine, glamorous and good-looking compared with how women who carried a plain pink shopping bag saw themselves.
In another study, some people felt more intelligent and more like leaders when they carried a pen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an MIT logo, even after some were led to believe they performed badly on a math test.
I’m going to pause for a moment, so you can laugh out loud and/or puzzle at the inner workings of academia.
Okay, we’re back. Let’s take this seriously, if we can.
Brands help people feel things, often important things like a sense of self-worth. We know this is true, despite how utterly maddening it is. Look at the brands in your own life and ask yourself how they make you feel.
Here, I’ll start us off…eyewear is an innocent enough product category. How do I feel when wearing my Revos from the 1990s? Old school, privileged, stylish — that’s how I feel. In other words, I feel good about myself.
Maybe I should be better than that, maybe we all should. After all, my Nissan is just a truck. My iPhone is just a phone. My local Market of Choice is just a store. West Linn is just a town. And so on. Right? Wrong.
People have a deep need to belong, to be part of something, to feel special, to be acknowledged and loved. The best brands provide that. For instance, our alma maters are brands and we belong to our collegiate communities for life. Our workplaces are brands, the city and state we live in is a brand. Taken as a collection, all these brands help form our identities, help shape how others perceive us and how we feel about ourselves. In a sane world, this would be a revolting admission, but that’s not the world most of us are living in.
