Andrea sent me this blog post – admittedly, I am ashamed I didn’t catch it first. Anyway, it’s Allison Arieff’s By Design blog in the New York Times – “How Green Is Your Brand?” Of course, I posted a comment that was way too long – a bit of childish excitement after Andrea suggested I try to get a hold of her and send my grad school essay which hit on a lot of what she (and the commentors) touched on and plus I couldn’t find her email address.
So that got me thinking – how do brands position themselves in a way such that consumers aspire to be associated with them? What sort of adjectives do brands bring to their lives? You know, like (sorry, Andrea’s mom) most of the tacky moms shop at Chicos (Mrs. Y, you are not tacky!), asshats shop at Abercrombie and/or J.Crew (depending on what kind of asshat you are)… And can we use that same sort of brand recognition/brand alignment to sort of steer our consumerism to be more sustainable, to be more environmentally friendly?
The first thought that popped into my head was about luxury brands. Everyone wants to feel wealthy, right? Sadly, wealth is nearly 100% of the time equated with power, especially when that’s the only thing you have to go one. It is the easiest way to one-up someone. I have a bigger car than you. I have more shoes than you. My house is bigger and in a more expensive city. My cell/smart phone is smaller. Obviously, luxury sells – I see a lot more BMWs on the road and I know most of the people driving them aren’t breaking $65K/year in salary…although I do live in the DC area. Anyway, you get my point.
So if leather, size, and technological advancement are synonymous with luxury, what else can we associate it? Are we going to get to the point where people in suburbia swap comments such as:
-”Omigod, i will not go to her house again! It was so…messy!” (my mom’s personal nightmare, hence her OCD-cleanliness” or
-”Ugh, the furniture was positively pedestrian and the paintings on the wall! Don’t get me started!” (my personal brand of snark)
with “Dear god, the air inside his home was sooo hot and dirty! Clearly he is a polluter and failed to buy Low-E windows that would have kept his home more energy efficient and thus cooler during the summer” and “My my my, she wastes so much electricity, no wonder the power is always going out. She should really invest in some energy efficient appliances and turn off the lights when she’s not using them.”
Okay, I know, probably a pipe dream. But just think – what if clean air, super-soft, 400-thread-count, brushed hemp sheets, and electric cars became the next luxury? Fresh produce is already a luxury, compared to the crap you get at the $4 all-you-can-eat buffet in Vegas, so why not electric cars? Yeah yeah, you could argue “the rich would be the only ones who could afford gas” but they would also be the ones who could most easily swap lifestyles when the initially expensive first-wave of cars/products were launched. Give it time, and you’d see all the wealthy wearing Edun (Bono’s brand) and driving fuel-less cars. The rest of the world would want to catch up.
I bought clothes today. Online! Capitalist bitch hypocrite. But at least I did not buy 
