Joanne McNeill: Brands hold us in slavery

Very few non-branded stores can survive many small towns.

Supermarkets did not exist in urban 1950s New Zealand. Butchers (with sawdust floors to sop up the blood), delicatessens, grocers and fruiterers, yes, and milliners, haberdashers, and hardware emporiums where nails were sold by the scoop and men in grey cotton-drill dust jackets climbed ladders to fetch obscurities from high wooden shelves.

Cheese was not vacuum-packed. Instead it was purchased by weighed chunks carefully chosen from one of the huge round cheeses at the delicatessen then wrapped in greaseproof paper (the rind was the best bit).

There was no shampoo. Hair was washed with soap. The arrival of shampoos, Loxene and Blue Clinic - translucent green and blue detergents which did exactly the same job but had fiercely divided loyalties - was the first sign of branding as the marketing strategy which has filled shelves exponentially with the new ever since.

People made their own clothes. Labels on shop-bought clobber were sewn inside, firmly out of sight, like guilty secrets signifying ineptitude.

When clothing began to emblazon labels on the outside, like badges of distinction, though lacking foresight or reason, I was shocked at people's willing submission to the role of walking billboard.

I vowed then never to wear visible branding unless paid a handsome rent.

Now, chained mega-markets, franchised food and clothing outlets, and service providers of the planet are choked with cloned homes, hamburgers and hoodies. Branding is the only emotionally distinguishing feature to offer an illusion of choice and no one bats an eyelid.

Somehow, back then, I completely missed the relationship between branding in its marketing sense and branding as a (mercifully) archaic means of marking ownership with a hot iron - of livestock and slaves - or to stigmatise criminals, adulterers, army deserters, racial groups and unbelievers.

The advertising gurus who developed this wizard marketing strategy must have overlooked the link too, otherwise they would surely have devised a more euphemistic term.

The more you think about it though, the clearer the ability of branding to enslave everybody involved both in delivering products and consuming them.

Consider the retail precincts of any regional town where locally owned, non-franchised businesses barely survive. The majority - captive to national and global chains - might offer consistently reliable products but they come with standardised logos, fonts, colours, brand stories and promotional strategies which, at least metaphorically, enslave the employees who deliver them - by robbing them of autonomous creative input - and the consumers who purchase them by erasing individual identity with uniformity.

Arguably it's disrespectful to compare slavery with modern market branding because slaves, cattle and criminals were coerced whereas contemporary employees and consumers go willingly to the slaughter. But I'm not so sure.

Branding is aspirational trickery where hair is glossy, bodies slim and youthful, the sun shines and everybody lives happily ever after on sandy beaches with hugs, dolphins, oysters and pink cocktails - only to be off-loaded later in a comparatively grinding muddy backwater with fewer original survival devices and sillier expectations than before.

Brand consumers have been deluded by the illusion of choice whereas at least slaves knew to fight for their freedom.