Brands and the Duck Test

When someone forms snap judgments of people based on appearance, we know it’s a lot worse than judging a book by its cover. Someone (nick)named Happy on some site made an interesting point on this topic:
“Stereotypes are wrong of course. But brands are good.”
An interesting question: are stereotypes and brands two sides of the same coin?

Happy goes on to say that when people dress a certain way, willy nilly, “they are creating a brand for themselves”:
“There's a nerd brand. There's a metro-sexual brand. There's a jock brand, a cheerleader brand, a gothic brand…a gangster brand.”

The next step in Happy’s argument is what makes this topic so interesting. When people see someone looking or behaving a certain way, they apply the duck test:
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
Now given that everyone knows this is how most people think, then Happy tells people who (deliberately) project a certain image:
“Don't get upset when people react to the brand you're pushing.”

Note that Happy is not saying that the reaction is acceptable, especially if it involves violence or discrimination:
“Does that make it right for someone to beat you up because you're a nerd, or shoot you in cold blood because you look like a gangster? Hell no - of course not.”

But did that brand projector not have a choice to project a different image?
“But on the other hand - if you dress like a respectable member of society, the chance of getting treated better is certainly going to be higher.”
That then leads to the inevitable question/point:
“So why bother acting like a bad-ass? I don't get it.”

I guess all defendants in American courts do get it: that’s why they all wear suits, at least in American law serials!

Comments

  1. KumarOctober 12, 2014 at 11:00 AM

    Usually you have a way of interlacing quotes well for your point so much so that the quotes themselves primarily seem to speak your point! In this blog you seem to have excelled yourself - it is virtually the flow of [hopefully] "your" ideas through "other's" sayings (simply put, "quotes")! Anyway, I am not trying to suggest that the point of your argument is not OK - it seems OK to me.

    I like your summing up with "I guess all defendants in American courts do get it: that’s why they all wear suits, at least in American law serials!". At this juncture I cannot resist from recalling a famous anecdote attributed to Sri Ishvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a respectable Bengali scholar who lived around early last century / the end of the previous one.

    Vidyasagar was invited for an occasion. When he reached the venue on that day at that time, he was stopped by a guard at the entrance only because he was wearing just the 'day to day' clothes and not the "rich and special clothes" suited for occasions and functions. Not protesting or showing anger, Vidyasagar went back only to return after a while wearing "special clothes". The guard let him in without even realizing it was the same person he refused admission to. Inside the place, the host and many others welcomed him warmly and spoke to him reverently. When the time came they took him to the dinner hall. While everybody staring eating their dinner happily, they were surprised to find Vidyasagar not eating but only trying to persuade his clothes to eat! It was so strange and comical that they asked him not without bluntness, "What are you doing?" It was then that Vidyasagar came out with the point about social hypocrisy of respecting just appearances.

    This anecdote is also somewhat like the many famous Akbar-Birbal stories but I am sure the point made is eternal. The society will go on for ever with its own ways, while wise men will also go on with their own ability to broadcast wisdom - not minding the energy loss of their broadcast which is received by only a few members of the society. That is life, no?

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