If it's true that love makes the world go round, Newton's got some explaining to do. What is love anyway? Has there ever been a word so overused and yet so poorly understood? Why is it so widely accepted as truth by 99.9 percent of the population, with almost no doubters or serious critics? The ones that do express reservations about an alleged phenomenon that science has never been able to isolate, are ostracized. Not wishing to be ostracized myself, you won't be staggered to discover that for the past 30 odd years of my life, I've been faking it. Love is all around, that much is true: it's inspired songs, movies, TV shows, bad behavior, embarrassing proclamations (sometimes on You Tube), public displays of affection, obnoxious bouts of happiness and stupid grins (while the rest of us are trying to get on with our miserable lives), discrimination against single people, advice columns, dating services, dates, blind dates, double dates, speed dates and other horrors. Oh, and advertising campaigns. They all want you to "love their products. So Mr (M)ad Man, if love doesn't exist, what is it we all feel (not just towards people, but also things) that makes our stomachs tighten and our hearts flutter? In a word, it's branding: A series of visual, aural and intellectual stimuli used to create a response from a target audience based on cumulative impressions and positive reinforcement. It's what ad agencies do to otherwise indistinguishable, not-very-special commodities to make them stand out from each other. It's called creating a brand identity that contains a number of brand values that, if properly and successfully imparted can lead consumers to remember them, whenever your "brand is mentioned (this is known as brand recall). While the value of marketing brands in terms of contributing to our culture (or its decline) is open to debate, branding's an important tool that can explain a lot about the world. Let's start with "love (I'm using the quotations as a kind of forceps, I know). Love is basically a branded term created to dignify our baser animal instincts and give them an air of respectability and a vessel in which they can be discussed in polite conversation. Otherwise, when you tell your parents you love someone, you'd be forced to inform them that the reason you want to marry them is you'd like to see them naked and you admire the things they plan to buy for you. Similarly, when you meet someone you like, it can be said that you were impressed by his or her unique brand identity. This contains the image they choose to project, the views they express, the outlook they maintain, the confidence they exude and the success they carry with them. When you feel that your product (you) isn't having the desired impact, you tinker: you buy new clothes, you read more books so you sound like less of a moron, or you go on a diet to reduce your fat content. Just like a company, when it feels its product isn't having the desired (sales) impact, tinkers too: it changes its packaging, it tests out new tag lines or it reduces its fat content. Sound familiar? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a lot of the serious problems in the world today are essentially branding issues. Having a strong brand identity helps you withstand challenges to what you represent and makes people less likely to believe negative accusations that are leveled at you. Two examples: Arabs have a bad reputation in the US, today. I should know: I moved to New York one year before September 11. Part of the problem was that even before 9/11, Arabs didn't have strong enough visibility or involvement in the US political or social scene. Their views weren't on the radar, their presence was never felt and even basic things like their food wasn't known to the average American. When a tragic event took place and some Arabs were blamed, it was easy to assign blame to all Arabs. Americans didn't know what they stood for. They didn't have a strong enough brand identity. After all, Timothy McVeigh blew up a building in Oklahoma and I don't see the Irish being "randomly selected for additional clearance in airports. Here's another example: The 2004 US presidential elections went to George Bush on one critical issue - gay marriage, which polls showed most Americans were opposed to. What most Americans were not opposed to was giving gay people equal rights in terms of insuring their partners, providing a legal framework for their union and all the other benefits of marriage.except they objected to calling it marriage. The reason is that the term marriage was seen as a proprietary brand name with social and religious brand value that most people held dear. They objected to their brand name being associated with an alternative lifestyle they didn't recognize as their own. The solution would have been to re-brand gay marriage and call it something else. Something I believe is being worked on right now (they're calling it civil union). One last word to the ladies. Don't turn to your husbands/boyfriends/significant others and ask them if THEY believe in love. They say that they will. After all, nobody likes to sleep on the couch. Mohammed Nassar was kidnapped at birth and forced to work in advertising, in Cairo, New York and London. Today, his main concern is that archaeologists will one day stumble upon his desk, debate the value of his profession and judge him.
