A BRAND NUBIAN (Or, "The real reason for this blog")
Posted by AK Cabell at 3/18/2008 9:07 AM and is filed under Marketing,Branding,African-African markets,Brand Marketing,Consumerism 
Brand spanking new blog on--you guessed it--brands!
And why, say you, are brands important OR not important at all?
Being a writer and observer since I was nine, I've had my own fascinations with certain subjects that I didn't think anyone would be interested in. Branding was one of them. So I'll give you one of the stories from my own family.
I grew up in a family with six brothers and sisters in Seattle, Washington in the eighties during the Reagonomics era. My father, the only breadwinner, was always trying to find ways to cut costs. To say we were on a bugdet was almost laughable. My father had extreme ways of cutting costs, including making his own sandles, buying any and everything from second, third, fourth and fifth hand stores, and making unusual low-cost grocery store selections. Sounds thrifty, doesn't it? The only problem was, my father would take on these extreme cost cutting measures and then abandon them halfway through only when he got sick of it. Thankfully, my mother's organic garden was really the only thing that worked from this sustainable lifestyle my father was striving for.
So one day, my father came home from Stock Market, the big grocery store in the South End of Seattle and announced that was giving up buying his favorite beer, Miller High Life. No, that beer was getting way too expensive, he said. And then he pulled something out from a bag that made us kids run back into our makeshift bedrooms and stifle our laughter; but we were horrified at the same time. Even my mother stared at him in disbelief.
It was a carton of beer. A solid gray carton with the big bold letters in black: BEER stamped right on the front. And on the front of each single can of beer the same word was there: BEER.
It was official. My family had gone...generic.
So we crawled back out, determined we would watch this new entity that had descended upon our family very carefully.
And when the sun went down behind Mt. Rainier, and my father sat in his favorite, janked-up Archie-Bunker looking recliner, and the last dish had finally been washed, we could wait no longer to get the verdict.
I think it was my sister Olivia who had the backbone to actually ask:
"So, uh...Daddy? How's your new beer?"
My father clicked open a fresh, cold new can. He sighed, reared back in his chair, and took a sip. He licked the foam from his lips and was silent for a moment. And then he said:
"Well. I guess it is what it says it is. Taste like pure sh*t."
Now mind you--my father continued to buy these generic products from this Stock Market store--gray box, black letters. He would buy products for us that we'd better eat if we knew what was good for us: CEREAL, PEANUT BUTTER, BREAD.
But when it came to his little favorites? It was brands all the way.
The point of this blog is this: We can't escape them even if we wanted to. They're in our hair. They're in our closets. They're stamped on our vehicles. They're stamped on our kids clothes.
They are the reason why you got that look from your grandmother or aunt when you tried to buy her a different kind of cold cream or different pair of stocking than the ones she normally buys.
They are brands.
Sadly, some personalities are even shaped by them, even complete lifestyles are shaped by them. Our behavior surrounding brands defines how we feel about quality product and essentially, helps a corporation ascend. And the shareholders bank accounts bulge.
And I feel that no other community is personally affected by brands more than African Americans and Hispanic markets.The black US and Latino combined consumer spending power is currently estimated at $1.4 trillion. Right, no typo there--$1.4 TRILLION. From tweens to the coveted 18-35, to our baby boomers, to our seniors. Yes, we need to be in the forefront of brand marketing discussion.
This blog will review current brands, have podcast and video interviews with brand marketing experts, and we'll look at folks who have managed to successfully brand themselves, whether you like 'em or not (i.e., Oprah, LeBron James, Michael Jordan, George Foreman, Tyra Banks, ZANE).
From my end, you will get the US scoop on which brands are hot, but we'll also look at which brands get the gas face (remember that eighties lingo?)--in other words, what brands have utterly ripped the African American and Hispanic communities apart? We'll look at what brands you feel should never get black and brown dollars again.
We'll also get the international black and brown p.o.v. from Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe. What brands are hot, what's not, what brands are on the rise, and what brands have that dreaded word "globalization" shadowing them?
I'll try not to bombard with you with thousands of posts and I will try to answer each comment. If this is a blog-journey you want to take, Then read on and prosper, I think it's a brand new day for you.
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