Brands and Their Surfeits

Abstract

This article approaches the brand from its surfeits, those material forms and immaterial social meanings that exceed its authority and intelligibility. By thinking through “counterfeits” and other unauthorized brand forms, on the one hand, and the novel and often unpredictable social meanings that emerge through moments of brand consumption, on the other hand, I argue that at the heart of the brand is an instability, a tendency toward an excess of meaning and materiality. Showing how brand and surfeit emerge out of the commodity form in late‐19th‐century consumer markets, the article then demonstrates how in recent decades the brand has mediated, and been mediated by, shifts in the global economy; in particular, I examine the respatialization of labor, the financialization of capital, and the neoliberal economic and legal reforms that have made such shifts possible. I argue that the capacity of the brand to function as a financial instrument of global capital has turned on its ability to both produce and police those surfeits that threaten to decenter it. This tension between brand and surfeit requires us to rethink the study of brands. In particular, any approach to the brand requires ethnographic sensitivity to those moments when the brand displaces itself in ways that enable novel social imaginaries, performative possibilities, and material forms that cannot be easily recouped by it. [brands, counterfeits, trademark, neoliberalism, globalization]

Brand Iconicity vs. Anti‐Consumption Well‐Being Concerns: The Nutella Palm Oil Conflict

“…Examples include fakes, brand‐inspired goods, overruns, defective goods, and generics. In linking “counterfeits” and other unauthorized brand forms with the novel and often unpredictable social meanings that emerge through moments of brand consumption, Nakassis (, 123) argues that “the brand is troubled by the surfeit of social meaning that is constantly produced by idiosyncratic and contextualized experiences of consumer engagement with brand forms (authorized or otherwise).” Preaching against the former love brand and co‐creating healthy alternative products consumers call “nutella‐something” puts Nutella at risk of brand genericide (Walsh ).…”

“You are your only limit”: Appropriations and valorizations of affect in university branding

“…These changes exemplified a move away from a more functional approach to marketing and branding, towards one more focused on generating a “personality” and aura for the brand and making it a locus of experiential, emotional and lifestyle fulfilment for consumers (Klein, : 24). In other words, the university brand is now configured as an object of affective cathexis, a tool for consumer self‐actualization, and a site for sociality and community (Nakassis, , ). These dynamics of branding and brand communication hence represent a recontextualization and operationalization, at a more micro‐discursive/semiotic level, of a broader neoliberal rationality working its way in and through the developments of Singapore's higher education landscape and Singaporean governance more generally.…”

The Rise and Decline ofLa Yuma: Global Symbols, Local Meanings, and Remittance Circuits in Post‐Soviet Cuba

“…Certainly, Cuba is not the only place with an industry dedicated to imitative branding (Lin ; Nakassis ), but the logic of such marca‐copying practices cannot be accurately understood without careful attention to the local context. For example, after an international track meet, a Cuban athlete, dressed in the regulation Adidas tracksuit and shoes, took off his shoes to stretch: the Swoosh was painted on the soles of his socks.…”