by DK Badenhorst (@BrandCultureSA) Brands have the benefit of not being asked to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A brand can tell a story, but it doesn’t have to tell the whole story and sometimes it can tell a little more than just the story.
I’m certain that there are alternative theories as to what sets human beings apart but, as a semiotician, I’ve decided to focus upon symbols, language and our ability to pass meaning between separate familial or tribal groups, as well as between generations (even if separated by centuries).
Serves us well
Our individual and collective memory has come to serve us as a species very well. Each generation doesn’t have to reinvent a wheel; instead, they can tap into our collective memory and build upon what we already know.
But can you really argue that memory and remembering is as basic and important an instinct as food and sex? Do we really crave information? Do we lust after memories?
When the Cannes Lions screened at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town a year or two ago, I joined a creative team to see how good the advertising really was. There were a couple of strong ads but the biggest tearjerker was Takeaway.
It’s an ad that follows a son’s narrative as he explains what dementia has done to his father. An interesting visual effect shows how memory gets blotted out and we quickly realise how crucial even elementary memories are to our everyday living.
The commercial sinks deeper and deeper into sheer loss of memory, the severing of the link between signifier and signified. The world no longer has meaning; it’s just an endless collection of things. The father is rendered an invalid and, for the most, we sympathise with the son. That is until the father, in a haze of random things and events around him, spots a signifier with a tenuous link back to a meaning: a pair of dumplings is his son’s favorite food.
Genuine memories the true currency
Being remembered is important to us. But, as technology has taken over and Vodacom is often first to send you a happy birthday message, genuine memories have become the true currency. Memories such as “my son’s favourite food”.
But particular memories have their dark side. We remember the good, the bad and the absolutely mortifying.
The horror of being branded with the worst decisions you’ve ever made is becoming a reality for many people as their social media comments bring unexpected consequences.
But the one that should bring tears to your eyes are prison tattoos: people who served their time, who are supposed to be square with the house but have been literally branded an outlaw. Would they not dream of selective memory loss at a grand scale — to simply sever the link between prison tattoo and prison life?
What we CAN change
In Poland, a rehab center called Pedagogium acknowledges that, while we can’t change the link between tattoo and criminal, we can change the tattoo. In a modern world where tattoo culture has texture, artistry and granularity, there is more than enough opportunity to reshape a prison tattoo into a fashion tattoo.
The modern tattoo paradigms are not a simple binary (tattoo or no tattoo); it’s a complex world where people can disappear into a crowd, be forgotten and become anonymous once again.
In Masters of Sex, an American period drama TV series, character Jane Martin reviews the footage of her taking part in a sex study. The camera focuses on her hands gripping the sheets and her toes curling onto the soles of her feet. She’s mortified and asks that the footage be destroyed as she defends her personal, subjective memory of sexual encounters against the onslaught of a perfect and external memory.
Perfection is harrowing
While there is certainly more to Martin’s decision than merely defending memory, it does serve as an illustration of how an external and perfect memory is somewhat harrowing. An unalterable tattoo that points to prison and nowhere else. That sound clip where you say one thing and nothing else in a foreign, almost alien voice that is both you and not you at the same time.
This unalterable tie to a signifier that does not shift as the person (the meaning) shifts and evolves carries a tremendous social cost as well. Take a look at FoxP2’s Project Phoenix.
It tells the unfortunate story of a man who, through family tragedy, found his way from a rural, small town to one of South Africa’s gangster hot spots. Self-preservation inevitably led to tattoos, which, like national flags on a ship, declares affiliation and grants diplomatic immunity of sorts. But as the young man evolved, his tattoos did what tattoos do best: the remained the same leaving him literally branded a criminal.
The dialogue about us shapes us, whether it’s words or symbols, from others or from ourselves; they steer us, send us in a direction. And what we are echoes through societies, current and future. If we cannot loosen the tie between signifier and meaning, we end up turning these young men into society’s reluctant handicap.
Remembering facts can be harmful. Perfect recollection might not be what human memory is for; perfection almost feels like a perversion of memory.
In their book “The Invisible Gorilla”, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons argue that we remember what we think we saw, we remember what we thought we ought to remember and our memories change over time.
Modernity playing tricks
It would seem that modernity has played some tricks on desire for memory. Have Google and cellphone cameras done to memory what fast food chains did to caloric intake — too much, all the time? Has this memory fetish finally become a taboo? Is the search-engine giant buckling under EU pressure or a cultural shift as it agrees to people’s “right to be forgotten”?
What does this mean for brands?
To repeat myself, brands have the benefit of not being asked to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A brand can tell a story, but it doesn’t have to tell the whole story and sometimes it can tell a little more than just the story.
Brands serve as a collective memory but, instead of a bank of facts, they have the freedom to be a bank of emotion and collective human experiences. They can be a collective memory of what people want to remember, rather than the ones they have to remember.
The most affordable recording device
This VW commercial comes from an age where the human brain was the most affordable recording device. Like a modern day cellphone, everyone had one and everyone had it switched on most the time.
As you can imagine, the commercial makes for a poor recollection of facts, statistics and data of late 20th century life in middle-class South Africa. But it’s an impeccable artifact of a very particular memory. It’s an emotional memory, not a factual one.
The evolution of brands has now left us in a place where brands are mimicking people. We manufacture personalities and, through social media, we even talk back. I’ve often compared it to the Day of the Triffids, where the plants finally lift their roots and walk.
If brands are going to walk like humans and talk like humans, they might as well go the extra mile and remember like humans.
DK Badenhorst (@BrandCultureSA) is a cultural insight and semiotics consultant who brings cultural context and long-term trend insights to brand communication. He contributes the monthly “Brand Culture” column, exploring the value and meaning interaction between brands and society, to MarkLives.com.
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