branding

in marketing terms branding is seen as being one of the most important elements of your strategy to sell to people. it gives you identity, it gives you visibility, it conveys all the elements of the message(s) you want to send to your customers (or stakeholders - a wanking means nothing word if ever there was....) so getting the brand right is seen by some as crucial. some are classic (the nike swoosh for instance) some are ubiquitous (such as the microsoft flag) some are plain dumb and pointless (most of them).
but they are seen as being all important – especially by the consultants who insist on “finding” the look that sells the message you as business want to sell. they will tell you about the colours you should use to express dynamism, trust, expertise, caring and sharing. they will want to rebrand, reinvigorate by getting a new logo, a new mission statement and probably a new (almost guaranteed to be nonsensical name – they have computer programmes that make up words that sound good that they can pick from).
we can all point to the post consignia office or the british airways tail fins and giggle.

so it comes as no surprise that new (re-branded) labour should use it in their recent discussions on multi-culturalism.
not only are they using consultant wank speak, but they have decided also to steal the idea from america (yet more proof, if any were needed, that just because it comes from america it isn’t necessarily good).
from now on asians are not supposed to think of themselves as asian, but asian british , or indian british or i guess if you want to english british. this echoes american’s referencing themselves as irish american or italian american or slightly brainy americans (not many of those about …)

i am not going to get into an argument about the rights and wrongs of multiculturalism as a theory or as a practice. we all know we live in an ethnically diverse society, as mentioned in a previous entry i live in an area that has many ethnicities walking it’s streets.
the question we are all faced with is not one of definition and rebranding – just by changing the name of something doesn’t mean it is going to go away, the problems are still there and they have to be dealt with.

further more on the question of rebranding as