Week 8 - Branding Politics

During week eight of our project we discussed branding politics.

We began the session with a case study of Miss Kō, a restaurant with a very particular brand image.

We found that some commentators had argued that their brand identity relies on sexist imagery. Upon group discussing, we came to the conclusion that we did not, personally, agree with this statement. Firstly, the advertising campaign is not much different to others that show the female body. And some advertising campaigns that show the female body also, do it in a sexual way, but Miss Kō’s female subject is not being sexualised by a particular pose or background, and the focus is on the women’s tattoos. Also, similar imagery showing tattoos is used with male models also. We recognise and understand why people would think it is sexist, because it does draw attention to the female body, but personally we do not think so.

We also learnt that commentators have also suggested that it enforces racial stereotypes. We disagree because the advertisement is very modestly done. The typography on one advertisement is written in rice, which could be argued to be stereotyping their culture – but the typography connotes the restaurant’s food more than their culture and race.

Finally, we came to the conclusion that while some would find it problematic, we think it would be a stretch to truly categorise their brand identity as truly problematic.

We then looked in more detail at some other advertisements.

We started with the GB Paralympics advert, which we thought was very effective. The poster represents Unity, as all the subjects are in uniform, stood in line together, and the sponsors of the Paralympics are small at the bottom of the page to keep the subjects as the main focus. There is no reference to the actual games beside the logo, leading us to believe that the advertisement is more about the people in shot than the games themselves, promoting pride as the subjects’ faces are all above the logo, and your eyes are drawn to them, but there is no attention brought to their disabilities.

There is a strong call to action with the line ‘meet the superhumans’, encouraging the audience to tune in and watch these Paralympians in particular. The framing is effective as the light is on the subjects faces, bringing more attention to them as the main focus.

We then looked at this advertisement for ‘Elle Feminism’. The main objective of the poster is trying to take a stand against misogynistic stereotypes, listing all of the names that women have been called. We found that there seems to be an overload of text, so not many people are likely to read it all to get the full effect of the poster. While the text is bold, there is too much of it. We discussed that the hashtag for #ellefeminism is very small at the bottom of the page so it isn’t clear what the poster is for – anyone who does read it, would think it was just an anti-abuse or anti stereotype poster.

 The final advertisement we looked at was this Stone Pall Poster. This poster is very recognisable and carries the message well, making it very effective. The colours and text make it bold and concise, also quick to read so the message gets across to the audience. The simplicity allows the poster to be more effective, rather than poster with too much imagery that can be hard to decode. The text is very demanding with its use of full stops and explanation marks, telling the audience something rather than asking them. It demands attention and demands that the audience ‘Get over it!’

Overall, we found this session very useful, as we can consider branding politics when designing our own brand images. Discussing how we can avoid a problematic branding image helped us in deciding how we can brand our company effectively to get our message across to the audience without offending.