The objectivity of marketing
Let me start then with a somewhat cursory account of the development of marketing2 in the last fifty or so years (for a fuller account see Cochoy 1998 and Arvidsson, forthcoming).
Marketing has always concerned the definition of products as both objects within competitive market relations and as objects of consumption; that is, in marketing products must be defined in terms of their similarity or difference - their substitutability - from other objects that might occupy the same social space (in relation to competitors) and in terms of their integration in social life (in relation to consumers) (Slater 2002). But this is the period that sees the increasing influence of marketing in the economy. Specifically, it is through the use of market information about competitors, but also, crucially, about consumers that the discipline of marketing has come to play a role in the (ongoing) production of an abstract object, the brand. Of course the claim that information became central to the organisation of the market in this period is not to say that it has not always been important. In all markets, supply and demand transform each otherThe objectivity of the brand 185 through a sort of back-and-forth movement of information between the two, a kind of dance between the producer and the consumer (Storper 2001). The argument being made here is that the novel understandings of information developed in the immediate post-war period (Hayles 1999) play a key role in this interchange, and contribute to the emergence of a new, more abstract object in the economy. The notion of the brand being developed here is thus part of a broader analysis of the implications of the use of information in the integration, co-ordination and organisation of the objects of economy and of everyday life (Kwinter 2001).
More particularly, the 1950s and 1960s sees a call for marketing knowledge to lead rather than follow practice, for a shift from descriptive to prescriptive practices, and from inductive to deductive methods of analysis.
The increasing legitimacy of marketing in this period is described by Cochoy as being in part a consequence of internal developments: the abandonment of institutional economics by marketers and the adoption of a combination of quantitative techniques and behavioural sciences. On the one hand, the implementation of operations research and econometrics contributed to the development of marketing science, a research stream that was concerned to model and optimise market activities. On the other hand, the importation of statistics, psychology and behavioural analysis gave rise to what has come to be called consumer research. This involves the use of economic, social and psychographic demographics to map target markets (Cochoy 1998). Crucially, the active role awarded to marketing involves a reorganisation of product qualification trials (Callon, Meadel and Rabeharisoa, this volume), and legitimates an increasingly important role for marketing in product development, product differentiation and product classification. The measuring devices involved in the process of qualification-requalification by marketers included statistical devices which increasingly showed that ‘beyond prices, the result of competition depended on the management of the multi-dimensional aspects of products - above all, brands, services, packaging. It showed that one had to play on these many dimensions in order to shape the markets’ (Cochoy 1998: 213). In other words, statistical manipulations begin simultaneously to decompose the fixity of the product and reconstitute the objects of economic analysis at a different level, that of the market.In these calculations, the market is not conceived as a static context for transactions in which fixed entities or products are exchanged, but as a verb, an activity, as marketing; in short, the product is not simply brought to the market, the market is brought to the product. As a consequence, the bundle of qualities, attributes or characteristics comprising the product was both multiplied - with attention to the so-called multi-dimensional aspects of the product - and dispersed across different stages of production and distribution.
The previously existing distinction between the processes of production (as the source of value) and those of distribution (of an already fixed product) begins to be eroded. The publication of Theodor Levitt’s manifesto for a marketing revolution in 1960 is instructive here. The distinction between selling and marketing was crucial to his argument. Selling, he said:... focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash, marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it.
(quoted in Mitchell 2001: 76-77)
More generally, what emerged in this period was a widely adopted programme of marketing management. This involved the idea of the ‘marketing mix’ which sought to present the best marketing policy as an optimal and controlled combination of the four Ps - price, promotion, place and product strategies (Cochoy 1998). This was the first stage of what might be called a probabilistic programme of marketing management. In this programme, the characteristics of a new object - the brand - begin to emerge from the statistical calculation of the probabilities of interconnections between parts (the four Ps) of a decomposed process of production and distribution.
In the following years the commercial success of the ‘marketing mix’ led to further shifts in the role of marketing in the qualification and requalification of products. Marketers found ways to show that products are not adequately defined by their functional properties alone. Qualification trials demonstrated that the product could not be limited to its physical characteristics, that is, its objective existence extends beyond being a discrete physical good. In short, product qualification in terms of physical or functional properties was increasingly found inadequate for the objectifying or performative purposes of marketing. Instead, the pattern of customers’ needs as identified through the use of the behavioural sciences in consumer research - in particular psychological theories of the self, such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - were used to define the emerging object of the brand.
In short, the mediation of the exchange or interaction between producer and consumer leads to processes of product differentiation and the emergence of objective qualities in an abstract thing, the brand. What is at issue here is the emergence of an object characterised by transductive relations, where transduction is ‘a process whereby a disparity or difference is topologically and temporally restructured across some interface’ (Mackenzie 2002: 25). The developments in marketing described here - the application of the marketing mix, the use of information about the consumer in the qualification of products, and, as will be discussed later, the use of the product as a marketing tool - are absolutely fundamental in this regard. They organise the interface - the asymmetrical communication of information - between producer and consumer and produce the specific attributes of particular brands.This key stage in the emergence of the brand is linked to a changed view of the producer-consumer relationship in marketing: no longer viewed in terms of stimulusresponse, the relation was increasingly conceived as an exchange or perhaps better an interaction. This view was advocated most explicitly by the proponents of a new organisational model for advertising agencies, which put ‘account planning’ at the heart of the advertising process. This position was first developed by the London branch of international advertising agency J. Walter Thompson and the London
The objectivity of the brand 187 agency Boase, Massimmi and Pollit in the 1960s, and was taken up more generally first by advertising agencies in the 1980s and then by design consultancies in the 1990s (Julier 2000). In this model, the account planner, whose role is to act as a representative of the point of view of the consumer within an agency, co-ordinates the various other aspects of the advertising process. The role was designed to ensure that brand ‘essence’ was maintained throughout the execution of the advertising design or creative process and to offer the client an objective view of the consumer’s experience (Julier 2000: 19-20).
At the same time, the traditional marketing concern with social distinctions and categories was supplemented by attempts to map constellations of cultural dispositions, values and references - so-called taste cultures or life styles. This attempt was characterised by a desire to get more knowledge not simply about consumption as a moment of exchange but as a set of heterogeneous activities, in which value is added to the product. Put simply, the growing objectivity of the brand was linked to an expansion of the use of qualitative methods in the market research industry Here, as in the social sciences more generally, there was an interpretative turn (Lury and Warde 1996).In a further crucial stage in the development of branding, from the 1970s onwards there is a move away from the branding of stand-alone products to the branding of product ranges and to the branding of services. Alongside the use of the brand to secure demand and often a price premium for the manufacturer by guaranteeing consistent quality, there is an increasing emphasis on qualitative differentiation across product ranges or within services. The product mix that is produced in this way is sometimes said to have three (objective) dimensions: width, depth and consistency. The width of the product mix refers to the number of different product lines established by a company (or brand proprietor). The depth of the product mix refers to the average number of items offered by the company within each product line. The consistency of the product mix refers to how closely related the various product lines are in end use, production requirements, and distribution channels. Or to put all this another way, the establishment and maintenance of links between a product item, a product line and a product assortment comes to be increasingly organised in relation to a new object, the brand. To understand what is at issue here, think of the respective attributes of the brands Wilkinson Sword and Gillette, both of which include razors in their product ranges.
However, while Wilkinson Sword claims to be ‘the name on the world’s finest blades’, Gillette says that it is ‘the best a man can get’ and is the brand name of a wide range of products including not only razors but also after-shaves and deodorants (G. Lury 1998: 66). The brands respectively position themselves in the ‘blades’ or shaving market and the broader men’s toiletries market and emerge as qualitatively different objects.Once the distinctive objectivity of the brand is developed in this way it may come to function as a medium for new product or service development. For example,
One general rule with the Levi’s brand is that all innovations must be ‘Levi’s- like’. What that means is that innovations are pursued or rejected based on their compatibility with the core values and attributes of the brand.
(Holloway 1999: 71)
This process is usually described in the marketing literature as brand extension. Thus, for example, the Persil trade mark for detergents has been extended to Persil washing-up liquid, the Mars trade mark for chocolate bars has been extended to ice creams, and the Smirnoff vodka brand recently introduced a citrus-flavoured, single-serve drink, Smirnoff Ice. Similarly, starting with women’s skin-care products, Nivea (a brand belonging to the company Beiersdorf) has been extended into men’s products, including deodorants, shampoos and electric razors (that dispense moisturiser). The luxury fashion brand Versace has been extended to include a hotel and hospitality service; the product brand Lynx has established a Lynx Barber shop. In all these examples, the company makes use of the reputation of the existing brand to enter a new market more cheaply, establish the product or service more quickly and increase the overall exposure of the brand.