Boorman Burns Brands to Promote Brand

burning-sneakers.jpg

Neil Boorman is going to gather together all his branded possessions, place them in a pile, douse them with lighter fluid and set the whole thing on fire. He's doing it as some sort of protest against the ruling power brands have over an individual's life and one's definition of that life. Of course, in a sick twist, he's doing it all to promote his own brand, a new book called Bonfire of the Brands.

by Steve Hall    May-26-06   Click to Comment   
Topic: Brands, Promotions, Publishing, Trends and Culture   

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Comments



Comments

Something Heraldo Rivera would do, except Heraldo would probably forget the lighter fluid.

Neil would get more accomplished if he lived in a block of ice, no wait, stood on top of a pole, no wait, lived underwater for a week. Oh ya, that's all been done before.

Well, he could resort to the old "let your balls get chewed off by a dog, to represent the pain big brands inflict on us everday" trick.

Won't read it. Perhaps, I'll burn it....

Posted by: John on May 26, 2006 2:00 PM

Classic Hyper-psyched marketing oversight to assume a book is necessarily a brand. Nice try meta-marketing master, but you missed the mark on this one. Someone's trying to speak out on an issue that should concern everyone to a certain degree and all you can do is swim round and around in your acquarium of corporate familiarties.

Posted by: Sky McDougal on May 26, 2006 5:12 PM

Sky, I've never heard an insult put so succinctly. You get the gold star today for best comment.

Posted by: Steve Hall on May 26, 2006 5:27 PM

He admits to the beneficial aspects of brands. He's just challenging the overwhelming power that they have, and some of the techniques of the branders.

Do you agree that brands have enormous power? If so, he's right. If not, may of you ad/mktg drones are wasting your lives and ought to do something else.

Posted by: CulturalSnow on May 26, 2006 9:53 PM

Which brand of computer are you going to burn? And then, how are you going to post to this blog thereafter? Are you going to burn down blogger? I hope not. I like blogger. Paz.

Posted by: nick on May 27, 2006 4:55 AM

I don't see why one should foreswear all branded goods just because one dislikes aspects of branding. To reject something just because it is branded is as foolish as the actions of the witless sheep who reject things because they are not branded.

I sent this on a Mac. I like Macs because I like the interface and their reduced tendency to crash, not because of the smarmy, elitist subtext of their advertising. In fact, it would have been nice if they'd redirected some of the millions spent on advertsing and branding, to ironing out design faults in some of the iPod models. But that, of course would have put some advertising/marketing people out of work.

Never mind, eh?

Posted by: CulturalSnow on May 28, 2006 12:07 PM

What an arse. Completely umbrella.

Talking of burning books....

Posted by: Lucien de la Peste on May 31, 2006 2:59 PM

This is just so f'ing cynical its untrue. he says on his site: "i'm not going to rasie awareness (to anyone who cares) about our addiction to brands by dropping the lot off to the local Marie Curie Cancer Care."

No, and this narcissist won't get the publicity he obviously desires either (and that would never do would it, Neil?)

Its also spectacularly unoriginal...Naomi Klein got there a long time ago, and at least she has a philosophy...this is just another Shoreditch t**t (333 was full of them) trying to avoid having to do a day's hard work in his life.

Get a life.

Posted by: Arnie on August 29, 2006 4:33 PM