Brand and Myth - by Stefan Waller (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Brand and Myth

A Cultural-Philosophical Consideration

Brands reflect the desires of the modern individual. In Nike, it's the hope of achieving success by simply doing it; in a Mercedes, it's the pursuit of status; and in a MasterCard, it encapsulates the longing for those moments that cannot be bought with money (but for which you still need money). The list can go on for a long time. Despite the fact that these brand messages are understood across various cultures, they have played a secondary role in cultural-philosophical debates. To professional thinkers, brands appear, at best, as banal and, at worst, as instruments in a malign illusionary context. They are seen as expressions of capitalism, something to be viewed critically, and thus rejected. From a more neutral standpoint, the engagement with brands is understood as a subject of business administration, marketing, and design, and therefore considered outside of one's own area of expertise.

From the Back Cover

The idea that brands have personalities is an assumption taken for granted in most studies on the topic. Less frequently addressed, however, is the question of why we can attribute emotionally charged qualities to brands--qualities that are otherwise reserved for living beings with souls. The approach presented here draws primarily on Ernst Cassirer, arguing that brands activate our mythical consciousness. This form of consciousness responds to concrete symbols and narratives in such a way that an emotional bond to the world emerges beyond interpersonal relationships. The brand personalities arising from this connection not only make products more appealing to potential consumers. According to Arnold Gehlen's concept of "relief," they also serve a broader function, relieving us from the very purpose-rational organized world that they themselves have created. The brands discussed through case studies in this volume are exemplary of this form of relief. It's not always about revealing the mythical dimension of the brand in specific narratives. Rather, the mythical element is evident in the fact that our engagement with brands aligns with thought patterns that we use and need to interpret our world.

About the Author:

After training as a communication designer, Stefan Waller studied philosophy, art history, and religious studies at the University of Hamburg. From 2007 to 2013, he worked as a research associate in the university's Philosophy Department. Following various teaching assignments in Hamburg and a stay at Tongji University in Shanghai, he was appointed Professor of Intercultural Brand and Innovation Culture at the Brand University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg in 2018. Since 2022, he has lived and worked as a professor at Zhejiang Wanli University in Ningbo, China, where he serves as Vice Dean of the Joint Institute of Zhejiang Wanli University and Brand University of Applied Sciences.

The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content.

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This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.

About the Author

After training as a communication designer, Stefan M.F. Waller studied philosophy, art history, and religious studies at the University of Hamburg. At the university's Philosophical Seminar, he was a research associate of Prof. Dr. Birgit Recki from 2007 to 2013 and received his Ph.D. in 2014 with a dissertation on the philosophy of Arnold Gehlen, which was published in 2015 under the title Leben in Entlastung (Life in Relief) by UVK (now Herbert von Halem Verlag). After teaching assignments at the University of Hamburg, HAW Hamburg, Brand University Hamburg, and a stay at Tongji University in Shanghai, he was appointed professor of intercultural brand and innovation culture at Brand University in Hamburg in 2018. Since 2022, he has lived and worked in Ningbo, China, where he holds the position of Vice Dean of the Joint Institute of Zhejiang Wanli University and Brand University of Applied Sciences.