Brand Experiment
By creating a brand, which only sells their logo (disguised as a piece of jewellery), the person wearing the brand logo brands themselves and therefore becomes the product. By becoming the product, the person will use their body to display their ability to consume a certain brand, and therefore displaying their wealth.
Fittingly, the name of the brand will be called BRAND, to emphasize unique selling point.
BRAND will be selling high priced products with a limited production run to create exclusivity. The quality of the product will be high to keep eligibility, but the design will stay basic, rebranded as elegance and simplicity to keep to a single selling point.
Our Project
Background
As human society develops and CO2 emissions increase, the threat posed by greenhouse gases is becoming apparent and climate change is becoming a global issue. Affectting not only people but the ecosystem we live in as a whole. Lifestyle is an important factor in carbon emissions put out by society, and the way we consume has a great impact on the carbon footprint. Changing people's consumption behaviour will lead to a more sustainable form of consumption, thus achieving the goal of reducing carbon emissions. Any form of consumption creates environmental impact, but those that do not have a value that can be justified are the most polluting as there is no need to make them in the first place.
Luxury consumption is arguably a form of unnecessary consumption and differs from ordinary, common consumption in that it is exclusive and only available for the wealthy few. When the main reason to buy these products becomes the display of wealth, it is called conspicuous consumption, which adds to the carbon emission load of society as a whole.
What is Conspicuous consumption
Conspicuous consumption is the purchase of goods or services for the specific purpose of displaying one's wealth. Conspicuous consumption is a means to show one's social status, especially when publicly displayed goods and services are too expensive for other members of a person's class. (Martin, 2022)
According to Veblen’s theory, people consume conspicuously for two main reasons – to be recognized by their peers and to achieve a higher social status in society. Both factors are a reflection of the culture and social or economic class that the consumers reside in.
Impostor luxury website demo
Use the branding strategies of luxury brands through web design and bring awareness to the consumer traps of luxury marketing strategy and extracted specific attributes to put into our brand to convince people that we are a luxury brand from a visual point of view.
Preliminary Research
Brainstorming
Both the design above are focused on removing the power of brands, which has a valuable power but is limited by the target group. People participating in these actions mostly already understand why conspicuous consumption is a wrong reason to consume. To reach the people who are not aware or interested, we draw inspiration from subvertising. In a way inverting the approach to creating awareness by not shying away from the luxury companies, but becoming one of them and taking it to an extreme to expose them.
Final Idea
The final design draws inspiration from the design iterations above but is mostly based on Main concept（3）. The brand design is developed into a protype brand, fittingly called BRAND. Focusing on showing (off) value, the slogan is: Show your worth.
