Branding: What We Hold In High Regard–and Why
I heard a wonderful radio show this afternoon that discussed the human perception of value. Is a $200 bottle of wine really better than a $20 bottle? We certainly think and behave as if this were true.
Not only do we say, if asked, that the wine coming from a bottle that we believe costs $200 is better, but we physiologically react that way. In fact, this is proven in numerous studies in which wine-tasters were hooked up to electronics, enabling researchers to see actual stimulation of pleasure-related parts of our brain. We seem to believe at a very deep level that a $200 bottle of wine merits that price because it is relatively quite rare, and therefore must be more valuable.
Here’s another story on the subject. Hermann Goering, as 20th Century history will remind us, was a terrible person—even judged by the standards of the Nazis. As it happened, he loved the paintings of Vermeer, whose works since his death in 1675 had dwindled to only 35. Sometime in the late 1930s one of them proved to be a fake; evidence came forth that a certain work previously attributed to Vermeer was an imitation. Now there were 34. Soon thereafter the forger was captured, offered his confession, and was sent to prison to serve a one-year sentence.
When he was interviewed at Nuremberg after the war, Goering stated that he held a deep, passionate hatred in his heart for the forger. His biographer wrote later, “It was as if he had experienced true evil from a human being for the first time.” Of course, this is mind-boggling coming out of the mouth of someone who had orchestrated the torture and murder of many millions of people, but it’s another data point suggesting that we value what we believe to be rare.
(This is not true of children. How do you get kids to drink milk and eat carrots? Tell them they came from McDonalds. This actually works, btw).
In any case, we shop according to our assessment of value and the perceptions of pleasure we derive from what we buy.
The Relevance?
I believe the concept of placing value on sustainability is very close at hand to appealing to a wide swath of humankind. We as a civilization are right around the corner from a huge appreciation of the things in our lives that leave our environment and our fellow human beings in good shape. In this category I include renewable energy of course, but also small, high-MPG cars, fair trade consumables, and so forth—all of which are niche items in our world today.
When this takes root, it will become a trend like no other in history.
