There is an interesting article on the BBC web-site today — Bonfire of the Brands is about a music promoter and style magazine editor Neil Boorman’s decision to burn all his branded belongings, from his Gucci’s shoes to Habitat chairs and even Simple soap.
I immediately thought of William Gibson’s most recent novel Pattern Recognition. The story’s protagonist Cayce Pollard is allergic to brands and works as a ‘consultant’ to detect the effectiveness of brands and logos.
I can’t help but think that Cayce would have had a hard time if she was moving to Hong Kong instead of London. Branding is everything in Hong Kong, from fashion to gadgets, the nation and even education. Unlike the Oxbridge brand which represents high-level intellectual accomplishments, some private institutions in Hong Kong like to ‘brand’ their tutors as pop idols. I don’t know whether I should be laughing when seeing these ‘English tutors’ posing on their web-sites as if they are selling the latest summer fashions from Gap. It was not funny when I heard their English pronunciation and failed to find any English version of their web-site.
Branding is so important in Hong Kong that even the Government commissioned a Brand Hong Kong programme to communicate Hong Kong’s unique selling proposition to its target audience. In order to keep the momentum going, the Government also came up with a series of tactics to manage the brand:
"A host of domestic and international promotional activities have been carried out under the Brand Hong Kong umbrella. The visual identity can be seen across Hong Kong, from the Peak to the airport. The Brand and its core values have become an integral part of major events such as the HK Rugby Sevens, ITU 2002, the Forbes CEO Conference and the Hong Kong Products Expo. The Brand has gained wide international recognition as a model for location branding, and other cities and countries have sought to learn from Hong Kong’s branding experience."
It does make me wonder how long Gibson’s Cayce could survive in this branded city climate and how big the bonfire would be for Boormen.
