Apex Hides the Hurt: Branding Advertising, Culture and Folkmusic - Essay Example

Apex Hides the Hurt: Branding Advertising, Culture and Folkmusic Introduction Defining the meaningof an activity in relationship to the action of the activity can be looked at as two unrelated concepts. What is done and why it is done can be very different. Both Branding and the creation of lyrics for folksongs boil a cultural construct into a word, phrase, or set of lyrics that define complex ideas into accessible communication. In Colson Whitehead’s Apex Hides the Hurt, the story revolves around a consultant whose job it is to find the right word or phrase to communicate an idea. Musician Bob Dylan in his work Chronicles discusses the idea of telescoping which involves taking a large problem or situation and creating a paragraph or verse of a song in which the problem is expressed. Branding is a similar activity in that the point of creating a brand is to find a way to express a point of view in relationship to a product in a memorable way that creates a high impact. Branding and creating folk music are activities that require the same type of skills, but are done for a variety of meanings with differing values within a cultural construction. The novel Apex Hides the Hurt explores meaning and value as it examines the experiences of a man who consults in creating brands. When explored through the idea of folksongs, the character is using similar skills of the folksong writer in order to create meaning and both create and reflect society through condensed ideas. Creating a Phrase One of the newest and most important skills of the late 20th and 21st centuries has been to be able to take complex ideas and boil them down into a word or phrase that will express the important points of an object, ideology, or individual. Using phrases in this manner provides for short, impressive moments where something of value is communicated. The ‘elevator pitch’ is one of the more important ideas in entrepreneurial development in that it is a short presentation, sometimes as a short as a phrase, in which an entire idea must be communicated to those who can help make a business project happen. The ‘elevator pitch’ is not about closing a deal, but about opening the door for a greater opportunity to discover the ideas within the concept (Lindegaard 167). This idea might be well translated into the purpose of a folksong, the lyrics communicating cultural ideas through verses that break social situations into easily accessible ideas that communicate something about a culture or to a culture about itself. The relationship of the idea to the condensation of that idea is the responsibility of the writer in providing enough information to paint a picture, but without so many details that the main ideas are clouded. A writer who has been charged with communicating something in as few words as possible will want to make every one of them count. Once again using the idea of the ‘elevator pitch’, the purpose in using this type of immediate and swift communication is to get others to ask questions (Deckers and Lacy 126). The pitch should evoke a framework of questions about the topic of the writing so that the direction of thought is purposed towards the topic. Condensing Ideas in Folk Songs In examining the folk songs of the 1960s, this was precisely the point of many of the works of the period. Bob Dylan was a prolific and powerful writer of protest folk songs in the 1960s. He wrote about social injustice, creating social change through creating awareness and inspiring others to question the world around them. In a piece of work called Oxford Town he writes “He went down to Oxford Town/Guns and clubs followed him down/All because his face was brown/Better get away from Oxford Town” (Bobdylan.com). In four phrases Dylan expresses the idea that violence follows a man simply because his face is brown. This message leads listeners, ones hopes, to examine prejudice and to create a dialogue with one another on the topic. The purpose of the protest form of folk music is to instigate conversation, just as the ‘elevator pitch’ is created to raise interest so that further questions can lead somewhere productive. Dylan described the way in which he felt about all the social problems that he saw around him as an experience in which he “wanted to understand things, and them be free of them” (61). He stated that the experience was like having all the books laid out in front of him at once with the ideas too big to fully comprehend all at once. He said that “I needed to learn how to telescope things, ideas” (Dylan 61). His writing became a condensed version of the ideas that he felt he needed to express from what he believed about them. Just like the ‘elevator pitch’, he had to get his audience interested in those social problems that he felt compelled to express. The titles of many of his songs can be considered brands for the messages they contained, phrases that overviewed the ideas and evoked the message in reminding the listener through coded messages that repeat listeners would understand. When a listener saw the title Oxford Town and had already heard the song, imagery of violence and the situation that racial circumstances created arose in the mind. According to Hasanali, Leavitt, and Williams, the purpose of branding is “to establish a meaningful, differentiated presence that will increase an organization’s ability to interact and retain loyal customers and improve their market place maneuverability” (21). A brand will create an image that provokes a sense of a culture or mythology about a product so that users of that product will feel a sense of community. Branding is about building a culture in which the product is at the center. Products such as Coke, Nike, and Kleenex create strong branding in which the company and the product are almost indistinguishable, such as how most people now ‘grab a Kleenex’ as opposed to grabbing a tissue to blow their nose. A good brand will define a genre, creating a sense of boundaries in which the community of users functions. The core of this idea is the sense of the community or culture to which users identify. Apex Hides the Hurt Author Colson Whitehead discusses the idea of creating a word or phrase for a set of ideas in his novel Apex Hides the Hurt. He begins his novel with what could be considered a type of branding in and of itself. He begins the novel by stating “He came up with the names” (Whitehead 3). In one phrase he boils down the life of his protagonist through engaging the reader to ask more questions while succinctly describing the situation of the novel. In creating branding he was creating an identity through imposed connections. Just as the branding phrase “Coke adds life” connects a better life to the use of Coke, Whitehead’s protagonist worked to connect ideas with objects or concepts, whether they were directly associated or only a positive shadow over them. Whitehead’s humor in his book creates specific points about the nature of the business of branding. The protagonist, when asked about his participation in branding a product that has clearly been around for a log longer than it is likely that he has been in business. He states “New Luno. I did New Luno. I added the New. They were a bit adrift, demographics wise” (Whitehead 19). The idea is that by simply adding the New he had reinvented the product and created a whole new market through this idea. Of course, this didn’t work so well for New Coke, so the inside joke may be in reference to this product. The section suggests that there is a trivial nature to the idea of branding. Branding is often believed to be a part of the evil of consumerism. The act of creating an identity is sometimes interpreted as dishonest, the marketing people made sinister because of the manipulations that are involved in selling a product. When a folksong writer approaches a topic, he is creating a sense of a culture in which that topic is best expressed. The writer of lyrics is looking for ways to create a community around the topic of his song, the members included because they are given a framework of meaning and understanding from which to create similar perspectives. Just as Whitehead’s book is about creating a community around a name that will be used to define its region and community, the folksong writer strives to galvanize a community either through defining lyrics or through inspiring lyrics. Whether the lyrics are intended to express an existing culture or protest something about society, they are intended on creating a community of those who understand that excludes those who do not. The protagonist in Whitehead’s book is looking to create the same meaning through his work. In the novel by Whitehead, there is a passage in which the idea of a shuttle bus is considered. In this passage, the reverse of ‘branding’ is accomplished by creating an elevated idea of the shuttle bus, giving it a space within culture and creating an idea about the meaning of a shuttle bus through language the assigns it a high value. Whitehead writes that his character believes a shuttle buses are “perfect containers of that moment between anticipation and event, as roving four wheeled, or six wheeled conveyances of hope, shuttle busses cannot be blamed if the destination disappoints” (101). Just as the folksong writer condenses a great deal of meaning into his lyrics, so too does the protagonist in Whitehead’s novel gain a great deal of meaning through structures that he has designed to convey meaning. Shuttle buses mean something more than just a vehicle, but are associated with emotions and desires that concern starting point and destination. Cultural Value The issue of determining whether or not folk music is diminished by associating it to branding is not determined by the similarity of the function, but the perspective of value that each of those activities is given. In general, because of the cultural commentary and the social challenges that are present in folk music, it is considered one of the arts and placed at a higher value than is the act of branding an object, idea or individual or commercial purposes. Western cultures tend to demonize consumerism, even though it provides a high monetary advantage and is the mode of survival within the Western world. On the other hand, while it lends little financial support to the arts in comparison to the amount spent in consumerist activities, as art, the folksong is considered to be above the bar in relationship to marketing. Value is what might create a division between the activity of creating a folksong lyric and the act of creating a branding identity. Negus and Pickering discuss the idea of value as it relates to cultural constructs of creativity. They state “We seek to recover the power inherent in the term for bringing the elevated and the mundane into conjunction, and for illuminating the exceptional and the ordinary feed off of each other” (Negus and Pickering 1). If one considers branding something mundane and folksongs elevated, one can possibly find a way to see through the differences to find something special. Just as Whitehead shows his readers that a shuttle bus has cultural value and meaning, so to do the ideas that come from branding. As an example the lyrics “Coke has life to everything that makes your living right” can be a part of a song that is expressing something of culture. The song is now a part of an oral tradition as it is sung as a part of a heritage, now that Coke has moved on to other advertising concepts. Is it possible that it is now a folk song? In an interview with Spin magazine, social commentator Camille Paglia said of advertising that “the Warhol (referring to pop artist Andy Warhol) generation is pro advertising. We love advertisements full of energy. Most ads are very affirming as they are affirming a product. I view ads as an art form” (Farber). Paglia goes on to discuss the idea of art and that there should not be a designation between the creativity of one individual and another. What is considered for fine art does not exclude public art, which advertising can be considered. In looking at the nature of branding and the nature of creating lyrics for a folksong, it is not a different activity, but a different purpose but the meaning of both is to signal society to ask questions about what it is, what it needs, and what it should do about it. Conclusion The book Apex Hides the Hurt creates a discourse on culture, meaning, and the mundane. The lead character searches for meaning in things that would more often seem to be meaningless or trivial, his work creating a brand that suddenly provides for a culture, incites questions, and promotes changes in the buying habits of those who are exposed to his branding. Folksongs speak on topics of social relevance, sometimes creating memories about events, reflecting social structures, or provide for protestation of a social wrong. Advertising, while often trivialized and made mundane, is a form of expression that seeks to create similar results. The consumerist intent does not diminish the artistry that goes into its creation. Equating folk music to branding provides for a better understanding of how culture is involved in the creation of branded products and branded products are symbols of cultural belief systems. In essence, folk music is an attempt to brand a community and a culture while branding assists in the creation of that culture. Works Cited Bobdylan.com. 2011. Web. 6 December 2011. Deckers, Erik, and Kyle Lacy. Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself. Indianapolis, Ind: Que Pub, 2011. Print. Dylan, Bob. Chronicles Vol. 1. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. Print. Farber, Celia. Antihero. Spin. October 1991. Web. 6 December 2011. Hasanali, Farida, Paige Leavitt, and Rachele Williams. Branding: A Guide for Your Journey to Best-Practice Processes. Houston, Texas: APQC Publications, 2005. Print. Lindegaard, Stefan. The Open Innovation Revolution: Essentials, Roadblocks, and Leadership Skills; [includes Case Studies from Top Companies]. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010. Print. Negus, Keith, and Michael Pickering. Creativity, Communication, and Culture Value. London: Sage, 2004. Print. Whitehead, Colson. Apex Hides the Hurt. New York N.Y.: Anchor, 2007. Print. Read More