There is an episode of the Simpsons where TV muscle guy Rainier Wolfcastle mentors Homer to become a bodybuilder. Homer's secret weapons in the quest for fitness are Powersauce Energy Bars ("A bushel of apples packed in every bar, plus a secret ingredient that unleashes the awesome power of apples!!!") Homer later finds out that they are in fact made of apple cores and old Chinese newspapers.
There's a whole lot of bad science going on in branding, and not just in the murky world of bodybuilding. In fact, dodgy ingredients and phony clinical trials have been stalwarts of manufacturers ever since doctors were hired to endorse brands of healthy cigarettes. Surely, in 2007, us media savvy consumers wouldn't fall for such nonsense?
I give you Nivea Energy Fresh Deodorant - bursting with the awesome power of lemongrass! The visibly energized women in the advert would seem to imply that lemongrass has natural energy giving properties. However, a quick whiz around the net provides no evidence that lemon grass (Cymbolapogon flexuosus) is not commonly used as a stimulant. In fact a number of sources note that Lemongrass can be used as a mild depressant for the central nervous system.
And look again at the poster. The lady's not encircled by clumps of lemongrass, but halves of lemons. Now I'm no botanist, but even I know that lemon trees have no relation to lemongrass plants.
This campaign is rolling out all over the UK at the moment. It's accompanied by a poster for a new Nivea Visage Power range, which promises to revitalise the skin with an ingredient so valuable and scarce that only a manufactured cream can unleash its awesome potential. The ingredient? Oxygen.
20 Comments:
That's brilliant - would love to know who came up with the idea to portray lemongrass as lemons.
With regard to their Oxygen skin care, they do have a billboard on Old Street at the moment with what I had thought to be a giant deodorant, but now realise must be a face cream can (advertising is slightly wasted on me at times) that pumps out bubbles into the street. Such fun. Although it is not, I repeat not, an ad for deodorant...
Wow, a voice of reason and sanity in the wilderness! Came across your site via the BBC website and I'm sure hoards more will be commenting by tonight.
Thanks Lynne
it does feel as if we currently live in a world gone mad with consumerism. I know that some people think that we should be grateful for that, but I personally feel that this ultra branded culture creates more problems than it solves. In fact most of the products that we buy these days are solutions to problems that we don't really have.
All I'm suggesting is that we value the stuff a little less and stop wasting so much time on money shopping. I'd like to think that we'd be richer, and happier for it.
Neil.
Oxygen beauty products. Hmm. Designed for the city dweller who breaths in carbon monoxide from 4x4s every single day. (Otherwise completely useless)
Hello Neil
I read your piece in the Guardian a couple of weeks back, and on the BBC website today. Just thought I would share some thoughts, as both made me kind of angry (although not as angry it seems as some of the zealots who demand you shouldn't have burned everything).
I think what made me most cross about your pieces is that, by writing from the point of view of a one-time brand zombie who has radically changed his ways, you only present two points of view. Either society/we are flummoxed and confused by brands so that we are brainwashed into spedning huge amount of money and huge amounts of resources on things we don't need (like you were), or we must forego all thoughts of brands at all (like you are in your experiment.) It doesn't matter that you no doubt will conclude that there is probably some sort of happy medium because a) you don't really talk about this (only the Talibanesque total withdrawal method) and b) WE ALREADY KNOW. This is actually how 99% of us relate to brands. We use brands for what they are - handy shortcuts to denote particular values or consistency of a product. So your project is like an alcoholic going teetotal for a year and then writing a book telling us that drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels a day is bad for us. Yeah, we know. That's why we don't do it. I don't know anyone who would spend a hundred quid on a T shirt or a face cream, and anyone I met who thought like that I would judge to be a gullible twat.
You seem to be judging the whole of Western society by the standards of a bunch of metrocentric fashionistas with too much income. Most of us aren't like that.
Mike
(Sorry, just found something else on your blog that annoyed me! In a previous post you write how Elton John spends more on flowers every day as the value of goods you burned, and how he is "admired" for that.... Erm, forgive me, but he isn't admired, is he? Only by cocks. Don't most people think Elton John is a spoiled, preening ostentatious self-parody - a symbol of gaudy extravagance on a colossal scale?? Or is that just me. And everyone i know??)
Ohh I love that Oxygen ad. Nutritionists and anti-aging people constantly tell is to consume anti-oxidants to slow down aging damage, promote health etc.
So adding Oxygen is likely the last thing you want to do.
My favourite brand for this type of rubbish is L'Oreal who have some amazing magical pseudo science ingredient in everything they make...
how much are they paying you to put this ad on your site?
you are a disgrace.mhv
hi neil - so it's been a year since you ditched the brands and i think i read this experiement was planned to last 6 months. so what are your plans now? are you easing up and allowing some brands back in to your life (say the comfier toilet paper and so on) or are you going to continue leaving them out completely? i imagine following your research and the journey you have taken you'll never go back to being the brand obsessed neil at the start of this blog, but surely not all brands are as evil as others?
i've enjoyed following your story through this blog and other articles, good luck with the book (and the baby!).
Great venture Neil! Re the lemongrass ad, surely they are not even lemons on the ad but are in fact LIMES, methinks! Are the lovely people at that advertising agency "Touchy & Feely" losing their marbles?
Heard you on Radio 2 today, and you said something like "it was really hard, living without brands for a year".
Apologies if I'm misquoting you, but I think that was the gist of it.
The fact is, if you're affluent enough to (a) amass, and (b) burn your possessions, then you really don't know what a hard life is. Not compared with most of the other people you share the planet with.
I disagree with "anonymous." Irrespective of our levels of material "wealth," all human beings are deliberately brainwashed by corporations and the greedy few, into feeling the very same form of emotional attachment. One persons attachment to what they see as necessities for survival - food/booze/cigarettes, are felt in much the same way as another's attachment to big brands.
If you don't agree, then just look at the volume of mental health issues since the World has become obssessed with image. There is an exponential correlation with today's voluminous, endless bombardment of images and messages, telling us what we should do, how we should look, and what friends we should have (yes, even you are clearly a victim of your own hype Addidas chap).
The point is, that it all preys on our values and beliefs, and thus has an intrinsic effect on our emotional outcomes. I've coached drug addicts, and I've coached shopping addicts, they all feel the same forms of pain and withdrawal as result of their programming, and they all feel the same endorphine rush when they get their "fix" whether it be Gucci or Heroine! I would even say that it can be worse for "brand addiction" for, as with alchohol, you are constantly reminded that it's available, and you really ought to be buying it or you simply don't fit in. They all need help!
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Hi Neil,
After reading about that oxygen ad I just had to share this with you. I'm a translator and at the moment I'm translating ad copy for a cosmetics firm. I swear, it actually says that one of their creams is an "oxygenating antioxidant". Just think about that for a few minutes. What is the average buyer-of-creams supposed to think, exactly?
Yours in a white wine sauce,
Colm
Hallo Neil! Hab dein Buch vor kurzem gelesen und führe jetzt häufig Debatten in meinem Freundeskreis über den Sinn und Unsinn von Konsumismus und Marken.
Nachdem wir im Mai von einer Weltreise nach Hause gekommen sind, erscheinen mir sehr viele Dinge als der pure Wahnsinn...
Ich versuche mit weniger drastischen (daher auch leider nicht so effektiven Maßnahmen) mein Leben brand-free und reduzierter zu gestalten. Allerdings gibt es eine Sache, die ich für mich noch nicht zur gänze beantwortet habe: weniger Konsum = Rezession + Arbeitslosigkeit...
Eva
Mr Boorman,
There is a double negative in your comment about the effectiveness of lemon grass.
Mr Smith
Oxygen, while it sounds healthy, would actually be bad for your skin. Oxygenating your skin unleashes more ROS or reactive oxygen species - oxygen-containing molecules with unstable charge that react with the skin, causing what is basically a DECAY process, not a rejuvenation process. It's exactly this process your body is fighting with antioxidants like Vitamin C.
Colm, somewhat depressingly I don't think the "average buyer of creams" would realise that an oxygenating antioxidant is a bunch of total rubbish. I think that most people are so scientifically illiterate that they wouldn't twig that antioxidant means something that gets rid of oxygen (and yes, this is actually a good thing for our bodies, free radicals, which are basically a form of oxygen, damage our cells).
Check out the Wikipedia entry for dihydrogen monoxide if you don't believe me.
I don't think this means that people are inherently stupid, just that they're/we're ill educated and too used to having someone else do all of the thinking for us, especially in the form of advertising!
Neil, was wondering if perhaps the fact that you felt it was okay to burn all of your goods was in fact an extension of the way you used to see brands? That those goods had ceased to become goods/items in their own right and had become merely brands instead? Because it seems that even though the runners were Adidas and therefore had become a symbol of all that you wanted to rid yourself of, they could have still been appreciated by someone who doesn't have the money to purchase a pair of shoes, no matter what the brand.
Just a thought, which may well have been noted before, but frankly there are just way too many comments on this blog to sift through them all!
Anna
thanks so much for posting this comment. I honestly hadn't considered my relationship with my possessions that way until your post, but I think that you are right - the goods had ceased to become items in their own right and had become brands instead. That is why I found easier to burn the things, because they had ceased to become functional products, but symbols of the industry that I had come to hate.
Each time the book is published in a new country, the same question arises - why didn't I give the stuff to people that might have needed it? You have in part helped me to finally answer that question - I wasn't burning things that had any functional use to me personally.
Thank you so much for posting, and do please write back if you'd like to continue this discussion further.
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