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Are brands more powerful than governments? |
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Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva: Yes, of course. (It’s a globalization time. It’s a big concern have big power, because they have big big money. But I think it is a ratio, it is a process, and when people who working at concern begin change your mind, go to a new level in consciousness, begin thinking, because in concern are working simple people. They must think and must do something to change politic from concerns. We need a lot of power, a lot of initiative to change the politic of concern. ) I has been born in Siberia for example, and my country is Russia. Now we have changed the political system, because it used to be socialistic country and now it is a capitalistic one, and it is developing itself according to principles of any other capitalistic country in the world. It’s a globalization time, big concerns exercise considerable power. They practically control politicians, because economical resources, fuel are concentrated in hands of concerns, which influence politics, because people and government become corrupt too. It is possible to buy everything. I think, the only way out of it would be the change of our self-reflection. We have to change our self-reflection; otherwise we would end in chaos and destructiveness. |
Abbas Beydoun: Yes, brands can be more powerful than governments in many times, which means that the brands themselves are like independent states. |
Alvaro Restrepo: Recently some countries are trying to develop brands to identify their own identity or their own symbols that identify their main issues. And in a way, it is trying to [recuperate] or the make the commercial products as a way to sell their values as if they were products and I think that governments have a more obligational duty to defend their own values, but at the same time they have to know who they are. Sometimes this economic power takes over the values of a country and that’s why countries have to really try to get their own, to go deep into the soul of their culture to know what, but it identifies them deeply. |
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by Ana Lucy Bengochea | 0 votes | 
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Andries Botha: I’m not exactly sure. It’s difficult to know the distinction between branding as a commercial subtext and government as an implementor of economics -- of economic policy. It would seem to me that there is a confusing line between the way in which government and economics finance and support one another. So I would say, government is really economics and process. |
Angaangaq Lyberth: Many, many governments are ruled by the brands. The whole economy of the nation is based on what the brands can bring into the land. And thus the whole system becomes governed by those powerful brands. You cannot do anything without those brands limiting the expandability, limiting the capacity of the people to be self-sufficient. You can see that in the oil and gas industry, you can see that in the soft drink industry, you can see that in the footwear industry and many other consumer products, which are really governed by those individual brands. So you and I, we don’t have the kind of freedom we dreamt we had. |
Anthony Arnove: I don't think that brands are more powerful than governments. I think the question asks a very important - raises a very important concern which has to do with the role of brands, the role of corporations in our world. And while increasingly there's an awareness of the role of these powers in particular to transcend the boundaries of nations, to transcend the boundaries of states, I think it's very important to remember and take account of the fact that states continue to play a very important role in decisions about making war and conducting wars and in policing the boundaries of dissent. Also, in policing movements and resistance of sexual change, and if necessary, repressing them. So, the question of the power of brands gets at the concern of the role of these transnational actors which increasingly are seeking to uproot themselves from the state, but in the end we find that they actually still very much depend on the state. And even if corporations and brands aspire to be global, fine, they either have to rely on a state to protect them; they rely on states to act in their interest in terms of regulation and taxing, and so on. But also, we find that brands find ways of localizing their behavior in order to appeal to the particularities that still exist within this global system. So, their loyalties are quite shifting indeed. So, the other issue that I think the question raises that's important to come back to is the way in which image in our society is being used to sell something that masks the underlying relation of production in our society, in our world, and how brands are seeking – as Naomi Klein in particular has pointed out – to mask the role of labor in the global economy. |
Anuradha Koirala: Brands are more powerful than the government because they have [inaudible] of the world. |
Anuradha Mittal: I think it depends if we see ourselves as consumers or citizens. Because if we are consumers, we will have basically brands be far more powerful. But if we are citizens of this world, we will be building governments that represent the aspirations of the people. |
Ashok Gangadean: I think brands, they can mean corporate powers, corporate structures. And so a brand can be some very powerful corporation, whether something like Xerox or Boeing or whatever the name may be, Volvo. They vary all across the planet. Corporations are extremely powerful and brands therefore carry that corporate signature of corporate power and money and influence. And we know that certain corporations and brand names are enormous, in the billions of dollars, in their worth and their command of funds and influence on the planet. And in this respect, from the monetary point of view of budgets, obviously, some of the great corporations of brands are far more powerful in that respect than many governments. The smaller governments in particular. So that in this respect, brands in terms of the money and funds and influence in the media and on a global scale can and are in this respect more powerful than certain governments. And this is a deep question that we have to look at in terms of understanding the forces on the planet, forces of globalization and to understand the question of balance and whether, for example, NGOs, non-governmental organizations, can come forth and marshal alliance powers to really counterbalance the profound, powerful economic forces that brand names can command, especially in the way the media works and the marketplaces works. So we have deep question to think about concerning the power of brands versus government, but also regarding the interest of human beings and people and citizens all around the planet. So this is an excellent question to begin this deep dialog. |
Audrey Kitagawa: If by this question you mean corporations that create the brands, I would say that we have to look at the interlocking connection between corporate interests and governments. The distinction between the two increasingly is becoming less and less ascertainable as the interests converge with each other. So ultimately the concern becomes will the corporate interests ultimately dominate and control governments? Historically, governments have been the arena within which morality, justice, ethics have been regulating, regulating body, and corporations have as their interest profit. So therefore we have to see the connection between these two interests, and are corporations ultimately more powerful than governments? I feel that there is an increasing incursion of corporate interests that have a controlling interest in government and that is what we need to be careful about. If by this question you mean brand names, the power of corporations to use public relations firms to mobilize the public sector, I would say that their ability to express themselves in ways that can mobilize people oftentimes seems to be more effective than government's ability. |
Benjamin Fahrer: Brands are more powerful than governments. Brands are like a stamp, a code of arms that a corporation has. Brands have the corporation, brands are controlled by corporations. They are the stamp of the corporation. And our governments nowadays are somewhat controlled by the corporation. Corporation has taken the rights of personhood, yet they are not stallion in the carnival for their actions. Flags have become the brands of the government, stripes are barcode, and the stars are the product. And governments need to return to their original purpose of governing that what’s needs to be governed and not representing the rights of the corporations. Governments are controlled by these corporations, through greed and power. Government should represent the people in which live in their lands. It is unfortunate that it is come to a place where these governments are controlled by greed and consumption. What a question? |
Benson Venegas: Unfortunately, this is truth. The world is owned and controlled by multinational corporation. People perception is also part of this idea that people think that brands deliver immediate benefits while government take time to satisfy their needs. So this perception is part of the situation where created - a general situation where people think that government is more power – corporation I’m sorry is more powerful than government. I think at this point we need to create possibilities where we can try and get a balance of power between brands and government as well. |
Beverly Schwartz: I think that brands can influence governments and brands do not have to be only products; they can be labels. And when labels are branded, they can do much harm or much good. But brands do not influence policy in a direct way, the way governments do. Their power is different and it is hard to compare the power that a label has to the power that a political process, negative or positive, has on the world. Brands do influence people and they influence behavior. Governments influence people and they influence behavior. They do so very differently. And for the most part, they do so for different ends. |
Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon. |
Bill Joy: The recent Asian monetary crisis suggests that the monetary system is actually powerful and probably more powerful than either brands or governments. It showed us that a government can’t really control the situation when the world flow of money flows away from the things that they’re trying to do. So while corporations can use brands to create habits in consumers the trend towards economic integration really drives the economic behavior of all countries even more than brands do. by Bill Joy |
Bora Cosic: I don’t think about that antinomy, since I don’t believe that the whole world is organized by principle of secret alliances, Masons etc. Off course is a company like Coca Cola whole imperia. If it leads White House or White House leads it, this is not of interest for me. It is more dramatically that such a brand, and there are hundreds of them, presents a Moloch, which drives world’s audience crazy and stupid. Instead of seeing that what I see in such a public peace: a bit of global ornament, trade mark of the company and something interesting in visual sense, an object. In Berlin during world cup in football (soccer), someone thought of presenting 6 most important brands in Germany: Aspirin, football (soccer) shoes, note letter, automobile (car), a book, and Einstein’s formula, as sculptures in style of Claes Oldenburg. So there are others that share my opinion in this city. by Bora Cosic |
Brian J. Weller: Good morning. Here we are at the beginning of Dropping Knowledge in Berlin, 9th of September, ’06. Let’s talk about beginnings. I want to tell you a story about a serpent, a man and a woman, and the story goes like this. A serpent gave an apple to Eve, and then Eve gave the apple to Adam, and Adam ate the apple and what he discovered was the seed. So the seed of our knowledge starts always with a question. So, let’s explore the question of a brand. A brand basically, if you think about it from the Germanic root, means “burnt in identity.” It means from the fire, something that’s branded. So we have the words “brand our sword fresh from the furnace.” So think about what a brand is. A brand is like a modern icon. It’s a burnt in symbol of the world mind, and as such, brands in a way are as important, maybe even more important than government. So we think about brand as what? Like the yantra and the mantra; it’s like the form and the sound of an idea. What happens with corporations, of course, is that they take these amazing ideas and they put them into symbols, and those symbols then using psychology through repetition, through a different sort of psychological ideas, use of language and emotion, they then burn in these very, very important icons. We need new icons. We need new brands and Dropping Knowledge is such an idea. |
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by Catherine David | 0 votes |
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