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UNTITLED

This trumpeter of nothingness, employed
To keep our reason dull and null and void.
This man of wind and froth and flux will sell
The wares of any who reward him well.
Praising whatever he is paid to praise,
He hunts for ever-newer, smarter ways
To make the gilt seen gold; the shoddy, silk;
To cheat us legally; to bluff and bilk
By methods which no jury can prevent
Because the law’s not broken, only bent.

This mind for hire, this mental prostitute
Can tell the half-lie hardest to refute;
Knows how to hide an inconvenient fact
And when to leave a doubtful claim unbacked;
Manipulates the truth but not too much,
And if his patter needs the Human Touch,
Skillfully artless, artlessly naive,
Wears his convenient heart upon his sleeve.

He uses words that once were strong and fine,
Primal as sun and moon and bread and wine,
True, honourable, honoured, clear and keen,
And leaves them shabby, worn, diminished, mean.
He takes ideas and trains them to engage
In the long little wars big combines wage…
He keeps his logic loose, his feelings flimsy;
Turns eloquence to cant and wit to whimsy;
Trims language till it fits his clients, pattern
And style’s a glossy tart or limping slattern.

He studies our defences, finds the cracks
And where the wall is weak or worn, attacks.
lie finds the fear that’s deep, the wound that’s tender,
And mastered, outmanouevered, we surrender.
We who have tried to choose accept his choice
And tired succumb to his untiring voice.
The dripping tap makes even granite soften
We trust the brand-name we have heard so often
And join the queue of sheep that flock to buy;
We fools who know our folly, you and I.

A S J Tessimond

Managementlitteratur #2

Before globalization reached today’s levels, being a supplier nation  did provide opportunities for reasonably stable foreign income, even if  it was seldom a recipe for great wealth. But in a globally networked  world, where brand-owning companies are free to shop around the  world for their raw materials, their manufacturing and labour, and  instantaneously locate the best combination of sufficient quality and  low price, supplying them has become an extremely risky business.

Managementlitteratur

The real success story of branding in recent decades has been the  way in which companies have used their brands to turn the satisfaction   of complex and even spiritual needs into commercial transactions.  Once people have reached a level of wealth where all their simple  needs are fully met, where they lack nothing which is essential for the  satisfactory continuation of their daily lives, one might imagine that  their surplus time and energy would then be expended on fulfilling  higher, spiritual and intellectual needs. One might also imagine that  commerce has no part to play in this pursuit.

But as people in richer countries have moved beyond basic wants,  so companies have kept pace with their increasingly complex and  intangible desires, attaching the promise of status, peer approval, tranquillity,   happiness, wisdom, intelligence, sex appeal, long life, fitness,  youthfulness, to their branded products. Now that every desire in our  waking lives is fulfilled, brands manage to sell us our dreams. Brands  continue to exist and generate huge profits because that is the only way  in which consumers who own everything they want can be stimulated  to carry on consuming as if they still needed things.