Brands’ communications are often sentimental in the extreme, refusing like Victorian artists to acknowledge the limitations of their products and therefore losing sight of what’s really positive about them.
Bringing the principles of art into the world of commerce would help to reform capitalism and improve all our lives.
Being loud and blatant is not the only way to get consumers to listen. Sometimes a brand can stand out precisely because it is quiet, says author, business consultant and founder of The School of Life, Alain de Botton.
The act of selling is at the heart of business, and yet we often internalise images of selling drawn from capitalism’s worst moments, which gives those involved in selling an unhelpful background sense of shame.
High-minded people are often instinctively suspicious of the idea of brands. Brands can seem hateful on so many grounds: because of their maddening ubiquity (they surprise us on a mountain walk or on arrival in a new country where we’d gone specifically to experience a different culture); because they squeeze out smaller independent alternatives to which they are often the inferiors; or because they radiate values which appear to us fake, exaggerated or plain daft. It’s natural to suppose that we would, ideally, live in an entirely unbranded world.
Many adverts take us directly into the heart of happiness: they show us families that are happy to be together, lovers who remember how to be grateful, friends who delight in one another’s company. They can be moving precisely because what they depict is so difficult to find in real life. Their emotional power is premised on evoking what is missing, rather than what is present in our lives.