"Would you like to live in a world without advertising?"

Imagine a world where every product you bought was in a white, plain box. The product name and other texts are printed on the box in a bland, black font and there is nothing to identify it colour wise. You walk out of the shop and every billboard, every item clothing, shop front e.t.c. is black and white. Nothing is identifiable. Welcome to the world without advertising.

Advertising and branding come hand in hand. If you don't have a brand to advertise then there is no point making an advert. So what defines a brand? A brand can be identified by any colour, name or graphic that you can identify as a product, for example is you see a can that is turquoise blue and says Heinz on the front, you can guarantee that it is a can of beans. Brands give us something to distinguish between product and is one of the main tools that advertising uses to promote brand names and products.

So without brands there would be no point in advertising anything? To answer this question you will need to look at the goal of advertising. Advertising is a tool used by competitors in business to promote their product as being better than their competitors product, therefore ushering the consumer to purchase a product made by the company with the more convincing advert. People are going to want to buy a product more if it is being sold to them as something that will completely change their life, and if it fails to do that, then the brand that 'lost the fight' in getting the consumer to buy will ultimately do financially worse and possibly go bust if they were to suffer more 'defeats'.

If you didn't have the brand, there would be nothing to compete against within that certain market as there would be no difference. For example, if Heinz were to scrap the look of the can label, get rid of their name and change the flavour to a more bland flavour along with every other company that made beans, what would be the point in advertising a product? it would all be essentially the same thing that you were being, with no distinguishable features to sell to a consumer.

Okay, so now imagine a world without advertising, there would be no need for branding any more, as even that is advertising in itself so it would not exist in a world without advertising. Everything would very bland as I described at the start of this entry. Everything would be generic.

In a way, I think it would be a refreshing change from the constant media barrage and peer pressure of advertising as it would probably make everyone feel less stressed and pressured, the world would calm down a bit. However, in terms of economy, advertising is big business and keep products flowing, generating capital for the big companies that sell us our beans. Also, and most importantly in my opinion, it would be a bland and boring world, with no variety and no room for personal taste and creativity, which is within human nature to crave after. Besides, variety is the spice of life right?