Getting Back Together with Brands

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!