Final Reflection and Farewell
Again, I am
sorry that I have been so long with this final post. I have been very busy with
course work lately. Nothing particularly interesting happened on the last day
of my week without branding. However, I was looking forward to “getting back
together” with my brands. I couldn’t wait to start consuming, buying, eating
and wearing “my” brands again.
Notice how I said “my brands” as
it is true that, in doing this exercise, I came to understand that my brands
are very much a part of my identity. I associate the brands I wear with who I
am. Being without these brands for even a week was difficult. It required me to
question why I buy these brands. Moreover, It required me to come to the
conclusion that a lot of why I bought these brands was because I like these
things and that I want to express my likes to others. For instance, I like a
certain type or clothing, or have a certain style, and I found I buy clothes to
show this. Although other factors certainly influenced why I bought this brand
over brands with similar styles, such as cost.
Furthermore, I have to admit that
going with out brands was hard. In fact, living without any brands was
impossible. There were many brands, such as nation branding, that I could not
reasonably avoid. Yet, beyond that it was also difficult to avoid those brands
that could reasonably be avoided. I admit that I missed consuming (buying,
eating, using) the brands that I would usually consume. Not buying brands
limited some of my choices because I could not get some products unbranded,
think websites like Facebook. More than that though it was a difficult
challenge because it took more effort to buy non-branded products. I could not
just buy things wherever I was, such as on campus, but had to go to specific
stores to get non-branded products. For me during this “breakup” I had to go to
Loblaw’s to get most of my food, but where would I go to get generic or
non-branded clothes? I don’t even know, and I think many others probably don’t
know, where to get most of these products. Difficulties such as this means that
even avoiding branding for a week was hard to accomplish, and in fact I did not
fully accomplish this (look at my blog about cheating on my breakup).
In fact, as soon as my activity
was over I went out a bought a lot of branded products that I had missed. The
first of which was Tim Horton’s; I bought a lot of Tim Horton’s in the first
few days after I started consuming brands again. I also wore some clothing that
had obvious labels, but which I really like, that I had been avoiding for that
week. It is clear that this is non-branding is not going to be part of my
everyday life from now on.
What then,
if anything, did this avoidance of branding for a week do? What could this
avoidance do in the long run? I don’t think that my avoidance of brands for a
week would have affected the companies of the brands I usually consume. It did,
however, make me aware of how I consume brands and how hard it is to avoid
them. Moreover, in discussing my avoidance with friends I believe it could also
make them aware. Perhaps on a larger scale this could affect the companies who
make the brand. If everyone, or many, refused to buy these brands then the
companies would have trouble staying afloat. However, this would probably take
a lot of people when you consider that many people refuse to shop at Wal-Mart
but it is still running. Perhaps, avoiding these brands may also make generic
brands so popular that they become a dominant brand themselves. If everyone
bought President’s Choice products, for instance, I would expect that Loblaw’s
stores would expand or that they would expand their brand to be sold in other
stores or elsewhere. Could it be that the generic brand would become the new
dominant brand? I do think, however, that I doing this activism one can become
aware of the dominance of branding and their own consumption. Also it can bring
it to the attention to others. Perhaps in making people more aware people will
then come to demand less branded products. Or maybe people will change their
consumption patterns entirely. They might begin to be involved in things like
DIY or craftivism. This is just my thinking and reflection on this type of
activism but I may look at scholarly articles or others ideas on this
anti-brand activism in my paper.
So in
reflecting on my week without branding I have come to the end of my blog. This
will be my final entry. However, I may go back and add further thoughts to my
past entries if I feel it is needed.
Thank you to everyone who has read or will read this blog. Goodbye!
