Rémino

“Brand” comes from the Old Norse word “brander,” which means “to burn.” It’s quite suiting for the effect it does to us.

There is something I realised about branding when I moved in Japan.  It’s only when I arrived in this country that I noticed brands matter a lot to us, even if we don’t want to admit it.

In Ottawa, when I wanted to go eat something small, I went to the fast-food chain named after the Canadian hockey player that started it.  For my drink of the morning, a medium soy hot chocolate without whip to go, I went to my favourite local coffee shop at the corner of Bank and Gladstone.  For books, clothing, shoes, banking, cameras, video games, soft drinks, and anything else, there’s a normally brand that I choose.  Even if we’re not looking for anything, seeing one of those brands instantly tells us what it does and what kind of products it sells.

Once I came in Tokyo, I was lost.  I saw many brands but I couldn’t attribute definitions to many of them.  What is that name?  Is that a bank?  A fast-food chain?  A pharmacy?  A cellphone company?  Fortunately, some of those brands have some generic names written along with them, sometimes even in English.

Also, while there are many foreign brands in Japan which anyone will recognise instantly, there are also Japanese brands we came to know which are different here.  A brand name known to sell electronics or cars in North America can also be known here for manufacturing air conditioning systems and rice cookers, or for renting apartments.

I often can’t explain the signification of a brand here without relating it to another one back home.  In my mind, I’ve made some associations between Japanese and Canadian brands, although they have no relationships and despite their differences.

I feel like I know brands like I know people, and it’s a bit scary.  That is the power of branding.

What if everything in the world was branded?

The video above, “Logorama,” was featured on my Twitter account before. The picture at the top is a screenshot from a defunct Web site about the history of common brand names, “historyofbranding.com.”

I don’t know why I found this video funny, but I laughed… hard.  I guess the only video that can match this is anything with two old grannies on power wheel chairs near a cliff in the Grand Canyon.  Now I’m free to see the world!

There is a ton of senseless “YouTube poop” videos that sound like hallucinations out of the mind of Max Headroom.  Any favourites?