"Intellectual Property" or dumb property

Everyone has heard the term "intellectual property". It includes things like copyright and patents. But it also includes "brands". Those images, feelings, and associations around a name or logo. Those territory markers left by corporate dogs to scent mark their territory. Those neurons in your brain occupied by overlords, masters not of your choosing and message content not of your choosing. That is interior branding.

There is also the big stuff outside. The billboards, the ads in papers, magazines and on TV. But it is the stuff inside that is really ugly; as ugly and all as the big exterior stuff is. Why buy a pair of Nikes? There are plenty of perfectly good shoes that cost a lot less and do the same job. No, Nikes come with a an association of feelings. Nikes are cool. Nikes are to be recognised. This is the value of a brand. The shoes themselves are made cheaply in some third world country in slave like conditions. Nike does not sell a product, it sell a brand - brand Nike. The value of the brand is the difference between between the product shoe made by a sub contractor in a third world country and the price you buy them at. The product component of the price is minimal.

The reason for buying Nikes reflect this value. Nikes are brought by people who want that feeling. They want to fill that void in their lives with something and that something offers itself as a brand. The shoes are in your house and the brand is in your head.

The same is true of a 100 other images and jingles in your head. From Disney to The Gap, to Nokia and so on.

When you buy a brand you are, in effect, buying hot air. Something that is only collectively imagined. Something that does not really exist. But something that is felt as a real need. You are also failing to exercise good judgement of your own needs.

This is not a "well examined life" to quote Socrates. This is the life of herded sheep.

So I leave with this thought that "intellectual property" is misnamed because it is essentially dumb property. For marketing it comes down to a scam something like the "Emperior's New Clothes".