Identity design
People spend a great deal of time doing impression management, that is, managing the impression one makes on another. People want control over how they are viewed are consciously or unconsciously aligning our own behaviors to conform to a set of norms or ideals—a kind of self design. These norms drive many decisions affecting interest in clothing, sports, food, cars, education, and many other material and non-material aspects of living. Consumer purchases also play a role in helping people express certain aspects of their personality and social status. And it is this idea that personality can be expressed through products that interests the advertisement and marketing industry.
Personality
Psychologists say there are six major traits that differentiate the personality of human minds.
A century of psychology has identified six major dimensions of variation that predict human behavior and that are salient to us. These are the key individual differences that distinguish human minds. These are mental traits that can be measured with good reliability and validity, that are genetically heritable, and stable across the life span, that predict behavior across diverse settings and domains, (school, work, leisure, consumption, and family life), and that seem to be universal across cultures and even across many animal species. [1]
Identified with the acronym, GOCASE, each letter represents a different trait. G represents general intelligence, O represents openness to experience, C is for conscientiousness and self-control, A is for agreeableness and kindness, S is for stability in emotion, and E is for extraversion. Conceivably, if you have an ability to understand a person based on those traits, you will have a good idea about how they will behave in different circumstances. Marketers have concerned themselves with selling products to people by appealing to these personality traits.
Propaganda
The propagandist must treat personality as he would treat any other objective fact within his province.
– Edward Bernays [2]
Propaganda is used to sell products just as it is to galvanize mass consensus around political viewpoints, and as Edward Bernays will argue, "... such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life." After World War II, the term took on a more sinister meaning due to the Nazi's considerable and effective use of design and media for propagandistic and tragic ends. Edward Bernays, considered the father of public relations (a term synonymous with advertising and propaganda), authored a book in 1928 aptly named, Propaganda. Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, applied Freudian ideas of unconscious desire for selling products and manipulation of mass opinion, inventing techniques that are in standard use today by politicians and corporations. In the opening paragraph of Propaganda, Bernays writes, "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the ruling power of our country." Bernays did not believe that a democratic society could be left to run itself without propaganda and that daily life would be otherwise too burdensome. He could not have predicted the impact of technology like the Internet, which provides near instantaneous access to multiple political viewpoints, fact-checking, product reviews, and other information which simultaneously undermines and expands the influence of propaganda on an individual.
One effective way that propaganda is designed is through framing. A frame manipulates how a person thinks about something, typically by helping them come to either a negative or positive judgement. This is the primary function of American political commentators, who interpret an event through a frame to support a liberal or conservative rhetoric.
What is identity?
Identity is the concept of ourselves, the concept presented to others (your brand), and the concept others have of us. Identity can scale from a single person to an entire nation. Identification is an essential process for human decision making. Differentiating between safe or dangerous is one of the first things humans do unconsciously, and this process is typically based on patterns of the familiar. This plays a core role in identity politics, typically resulting in exclusion or separation of people–and by extension contributes to bigotry and ignorance according to a wide variety of physical or social attributes. What is an identity for a person? Tim Urban explores this question on his blog, Wait But Why, in a post entitled, What Makes You, You? The post is a summary of various models used to understand what identity might be and why it's so hard to pin down.
Brand identity
Branding is the narrative that presents the story of a person, company, product, service, or organization to others. Brands are supposed to help people make choices, and reassure them that they made the correct one at a time where products are saturated with competition. Branding is therefore a kind of propaganda for impression management, constructing the identity of a company or person to more easily sell products, ideas, or concepts.
The "tyranny of choice" is a popular expression that refers to when the overabundance of options paralyzes a person's ability to choose. W. E. Hick published "On the Rate of Gain of Information" in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1952, and subsequently Hick's Law was formed. Hick's Law is a mathematical formula used to estimate the amount of time it will take a person to make a decision. It states that the amount of time required to make a decision is a function of the amount of options available. When selling products, branding is used to help a person make those decisions faster. For simple operations, awareness of Hick's Law will help designers better understand how to make an interaction for their users more efficient.
A good example of the "tyranny of choice" can be experienced in the American supermarket. For this example, let's consider which toothbrush to buy, for me a stressful task that never feels gratifying. Some questions I ask while shopping are: which toothbrush has the most effective bristle pattern? Which bristle hardness is the right hardness? Which will cause the least harm to the environment? Which will last the longest before the need to buy another one? Does the value-pack of four toothbrushes make financial sense? Are there reviews that can help me decide? Maybe I should try that sonic thing that shoots sound-waves at my teeth. Why does the eco-friendly bamboo toothbrush cost twice as much though it looks like it will do half as good a job at cleaning? I typically spend 20 minutes in the aisle trying to figure out which option is best option before I give up and purchase the same kind of toothbrush I have been using for the last decade.
Good branding will communicate the product's attributes and benefits to a person who has corresponding values to hep them choose that product, and will help the consumer feel that they've made the right choice. Buyer's remorse is when someone has regret after buying something, often because they prioritized incorrectly, they didn't spend enough time thinking about their choice, or the product's branding was somehow dishonest.
In corporate branding, the market drives brand identity design for the purpose of attracting customers, clients, suppliers, investors, and other stakeholders. Branding can help a company to promote a kind of historical heritage, disruptive newness, or another set of values in order to appeal to a target market. Logos, word-marks, letterhead, packaging, architecture, corporate culture, product aesthetics, social impact, and leadership personalities all contribute to the brand identity.
Citations
- Miller, Geoffrey. Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior. 2009. Page 144
- Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. 1928