Cultural Mediations of Brands. Caroline Marti
paradigm shift.
It is true that paradigmatic upheavals are often mentioned by various thinkers or researchers, the rupture being the opportunity for those who announce it to proclaim a new order and to establish themselves as a guide to the terra incognita that is open to discovery. It is generally stimulated by technological innovation and accompanied by escort speeches11 from economic and social actors. The 1990s had thus seen a “new paradigm” in the field of marketing with the emergence of “relationship marketing”. It valued both the technical possibilities offered by the evolution of information technology, with the famous so-called relationship databases that were linked together, and a rather new perception of the consumer identified as an individual to be captured in a “holistic” way, likely to be loyalized and considered as a target in their own right, hence the appearance in these years of the no less famous and paradoxical one to one.
I.3. Communication, the object of discourse
I.3.1. The denial of a permanent evolution
The paradigmatic break in the consumer’s paradigm announced by some in recent years is part of the flow of a permanent evolution of representations of consumption, consumers and what professionals consider to be good practices. Coupled with the technological evolution and the rise of the Internet, and the representations of market communication mentioned above, these representations of consumer developments have contributed to the emergence and wide dissemination of the idea of a new consumer who has become an “expert” or become “intelligent”. However, it should have been proven that it was not so before. This striking shortcut comes from the observation of the tactics deployed by consumers, who are more easily informed thanks to the possibilities of the Internet to compare offers and optimize their purchases. Evoking a new consumer reveals a very photographic approach with an understanding of phenomena at a precise moment without placing it in a logic of technical, economic, and social evolutions. This could be seen as a denial of the gestation of transformations and, in the case of market mediation, a possible denial of the balance of power, of the existing structural tension between producers and consumers, both of which constantly adjust their act according to each other.
Yves Jeanneret develops this point through the terms of predilection and adjustment:
Predilection is based on the idea that any subject of communication recognizes and qualifies the text, reinvents in a way what makes sign and form; the adjustment to the devices defines the strictly practical dimension, in a strong sense12, of this subjective commitment. This pair of notions essentially underlies the cultural and political importance of communication, since it refers to the inventive activity that subjects deploy to create, based on their media experiences, their horizon of value, thought, and judgment. The fact that these categories are based on the resource of social creativity does not prevent them from not offering capture, influence, and strategy. (Jeaneret 2014, p. 79, emphasis added)
The denial of adjustment constitutes a communicational denial and the author underlines the importance of repression: commercial mediations are naturalized by professionals because they cannot exhibit the very foundations of their ideology, but we will return more specifically to this point later.
The points of view developed by technology providers and marketing professionals who are on the lookout for emerging issues are legitimized and disseminated in institutional spaces such as the professional press, the general press, publishing, schools and universities, conferences, to the point of becoming social topics to be known and relayed so as not to be suspected of ignorance or obsolescence, which is the ultimate risk of managerial skills.
This parenthesis was necessary in order not to ignore the underlying logic of the “new communication” that many marketing and advertising players are in favor of.
I.3.2. Denunciation of a communication to be rebuilt
The announced new communication is characterized by the horizontality of exchanges between producers and consumers; this communicative ideal recalls the symmetrical relationships depicted by the authors of the Palo Alto school (Watzlawick 1979). It opposes the so-called “vertical” communication considered undesirable, which is outdated by virtue of the ability of individuals to thwart manipulative injunctions and their desire to be considered as individuals in their own right and not as common targets.
The awareness of the misdeeds of communication practiced until then tends to apprehend it as vulgar, in the double meaning of too widespread, but also gross and lacking elevation.
It is this communication, practiced for years without ethics and discernment, that Laurent Habib, an experienced professional and former boss of Euro-RSCG, denounces, calling for a renewal (Habib 2010). Before stating his somewhat awaited proposal for a cure, he makes an interesting observation because he constitutes a kind of mea culpa of the profession with a diatribe on communication that would have gone astray by serving interests without believing in them or by serving questionable interests without ethics. The collapse of communication credit would thus have contributed to the crisis of widespread mistrust affecting society as a whole and to the weakening of authority figures, particularly in the media, politics, business, and brands.
Overall, in professional speeches, traditional advertising certainly appears necessary and unavoidable, but emblematic of an old, less efficient, and less effective means of communication than the possibilities of communicating otherwise.
In this great maelstrom, the strategies of the market players are quickly identified and described as petty. The de-compartmentalization of communication, which had hitherto been divided into “institutional communication”, “corporate communication”, and “commercial communication”, intended for different audiences (public actors, journalists, customers, and potential customers), has led to a breakthrough in interpretation: the euphoric communication of a particular brand does not exclude questionable internal behavior. Or, the values claimed from customers can take on a new face with pressure on financial results via wage bill cuts revealed in the press.
This unveiling of the behind-the-scenes of the lives of brand management companies connotes their speeches and discredits their intentions. The transaction is taboo in the minds of professionals, as revealed by the euphemism and growing sensitivity of marketing vocabulary. “Clubs”, “loyalty”, “love brands”, “friends” or “fans”, “members”, “followers”, and other socio-affective metaphors seem to want to make people forget the martial or commercial terms, “targets” and “clients” promising a less Venusian relationship. Seduction is the pursuit of conquest by other means.
In this context, professionals’ circumvention strategies seem logical and even inevitable. Taking into account the public and publics implies, for each brand, thwarting a supposedly degraded reception of messages in order to better adapt and adjust a predetermined form of communication as favorable. Finally, it is a metadiscursive point of view on communication that has been played out intensely for several years and is helping to transform the representations of commercial mediation.
This brief summary is not intended to lead to an exhaustive review of all the initiatives that aspire to rebuild communication and that rely on the findings to propose revised or innovative forms of communication. But it allows brands’ cultural initiatives to be placed in this overall context.
My aim is to show how, in a particular social context, representations about what consumers are and what communication should be, lead to the implementation of communication mechanisms that are supposed to enable brands to develop their influence.
I.4. Cultural mediation as a bypass
I.4.1. Assimilation strategies and position of authority
In view of the developments mentioned, it is clear that it is necessary to avoid depreciated resources and to address targets through bypass channels, through media choices and devices that enhance brands in other ways.
Beyond