Brands Are Boring

by Doc Searls

Thursday, April 08, 2010 at 09:46 AM EDT

And "social media" is a crock.

Brands are boring because they're not human. They're companies. And, despite recent Supreme Court decisions to the contrary, companies are not human. They are abstractions that make business possible. Businesses are necessary to thriving economies and working civilizations. They are comprised of human beings and therefore have human qualities. But they are not themselves human.

The term "brand" was borrowed by from the cattle industry, and came into popular use during the golden age of network radio, in the 1930s and '40s, when large suppliers to grocery and department stores (especially detergent and tobacco companies) won space in "shelf wars" by putting one product in eight different packages and singing about the difference. Singing was a form of branding. You burned a song into consumers' heads, so they had no choice but to recall it.

Okay, hit it (in 3/4 time, and a Munich beer house spirit, flasks raised, singing loudly)…

Shaefer
Is the
One beer to have
When you're having more than one.
Shaefer
Pleasure
Doesn't fade
Even when your thirst is done.
The most rewarding flavor
In this man's world
Is for people who are having fun.
Shaefer
Is the
One beer to have
When you're having more than one.

I can't help knowing that song because Rheingold burned it into the brains of baseball fans listening to Brooklyn Dodgers games. I know this one…

My beer is Rheingold the dry beer.
Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer.
It's not bitter, not sweet.
It's the extra dry treat.
Won't you buy extra dry Rheingold beer?

.. because Rheingold advertised during Giants games.

Piels and Ballantine had less memorable jingles, though I do remember "Bert and Harry Piels," who were actually Bob & Ray, the most dry and ironic radio comedians who ever walked the earth.

In those days it made sense to brand, because there were so few media, and — actually — so few companies. If you wanted to make beer you needed a big industrial brewery. The Industrial Age was one in which Industry was All.

This is no longer the case.

As for social media, all media now need to be social. So we're talking about redundancy here.

Meanwhile, lots of social media types are talking about brands and branding as if these were new and hip things. They're not. They're heavy and old. We need to move on, folks. Think of something human instead.

When a friend came back from SXSW recently, we talked about how, at the show, it was "social every fucking thing there is." The term SEFTTI was thus coined.

We need to move past that too.

This article originally appeared on Doc Searls Weblog.