Branded Nation : The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld

Rating:
Summary: Marketing Where You Least Expected It
Review: James Twitchell has written extensively on advertising and consumerism, and knows that consumers are not logical. If we were, he says, we would know that we needed, say, a laundry detergent, and would research to see what detergent was best, perhaps checking to see what the boffins at _Consumer Reports_ might recommend. Then we would take the recommendation to the grocery store, where we would see a very restricted number of possible logical choices. It doesn't work that way for detergent, nor, these days, does it work that way for churches, museums, or universities. In _Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld_ (Simon & Schuster) Twitchell has written a funny and scary evaluation of the pervasiveness of marketing in American life beyond the grocery shelves.

The problem with laundry detergents is that there are plenty of them, offered by many suppliers, and most of them are interchangeable. There is very little difference between them, so it is necessary for the manufacturers to create a story about the brand, how it is "clothesline-fresh", perhaps, or how the power-granules go to work on stains. Twitchell's thesis is that schools, museums, and churches are all supplying pretty much the same thing, and to up their market share, they are telling stories about themselves (branding) and as good consumers, we are going along with them. We think that museums have a higher calling than competing for a market share, that they don't really pay attention to the turnstiles, and that they are "... only the custodians of, shhh, please be quiet, don't touch, the deep truth." However true this may have been in the past, it is no longer. There has been a huge growth in the numbers of museums, the theme of a surplus of goods, though we don't usually view museums that way. The "modern, formal, self-conscious museum" is not what people go to as much as they go to theme exhibits, like "Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the theme is the brand and holds the emotion. For decades there have been more college students than seats in the classroom, so the marketing had to begin. Harvard wouldn't admit as much, but it has a great brand. Twitchell (who is a professor of English at the University of Florida, an institution that does not avoid some withering remarks here) sniffs at the Harvard record, which he says lacks real substance. What's good about Harvard is not what comes out, but what goes in: "the best students, the most money, and the deepest faith in the brand." In churches, the product, epiphany or salvation, is undifferentiated, producing cut-throat competition for the stable forty percent of people who go to church regularly; this number does not go up, so churches are taking customers (sometimes known as parishioners) from one another. Twitchell examines the brand shifts in Protestantism that are the same as when Sam's Club comes to town: warehouse churches, of no particular denomination, on the outside of town with huge parking lots.

It is disconcerting and amusing to hear of these important spheres of life described in marketing terms, but Twitchell knows the lingo. All of them, for instance, are LBEs, or Location Based Entertainments. While his evaluations may be controversial, this is no polemic; Twitchell does not find branding bad; other marketing systems are simply antiquated. Brands have become motivators, "the basis not just of interactions but of interior actions." He thinks that identification with brands may be the way we will continue to spread common knowledge and beliefs, and that it thus may be the foundation of community. States are practicing branding (for instance, in advertising as vacation destinations), and countries are, too. Twitchell quotes a CEO who is looking at the big picture: "What makes us good at selling soap can help us sell America." Perhaps so, but even Twitchell speculates that the story of America, which could be best summarized as "complexity" may at this time be overwhelmed by the perceived story of "an arrogant rogue."


Rating:
Summary: I exepcted more from this book ...
Review: Twitchell examines how the seemingly non-commercial worlds of colleges and universities, churches, and museums have become commercialized by embracing the religion of marketing. The book reads like a series of long-form white papers with general and somewhat interesting observations, but no actionable takeaways. I should warn ya ... Twitchell is extremely verbose ... he carries on from page-to-page like a know-it-all who doesn't know when to shut up.