(International Library of Sociology) Celia Lury - Brands_ The Logos of the Global Economy-Routledge (2004)

notably by Raymond Williams in his discussion of television (1974).
Simmel had at the beginning of the twentieth century already described
the liquidity of money. He drew attention to the importance of the
rhythm of its movements—of the slow accumulation of private savings,
the swings and roundabouts of corporate investment, the ups and downs
of buying and selling stocks and shares, and the fluctuations of credit
and debt—for the wider culture. As he puts it, ‘Money is nothing but
the vehicle for a movement in which everything else that is not in
motion is completely extinguished’ ([1907] 1990:511). And a number of
other commentators have more recently described the movements of
not only money, but also people, ideas and risks in terms of flows
(Appadurai, 1996; Lash and Urry, 1994; Shields, 1997). But Williams
provides a precise elaboration of the logic of flow in his account of the
experience of watching television (in making sense of this analogy,
remember the notion of the brand as the broadcast distribution of
commodities12).
For Williams, flow is a sequence or serial assembly of units
characterised by speed, variability and the miscellaneous. In
developing this definition, he notes the historical decline of the use of
intervals between programmes in broadcasting—or rather, he draws
attention to a fundamental re-evaluation of the interval. In the early
days of broadcasting on radio, for example, there would be intervals of
complete silence between programmes. But now, no longer dividing
discrete programmes, no longer an interruption or silence, the interval
plays a vital role in the management of the response gap of interactivity:
it makes a sequence (or sequential progression) of programmes (or
products) into a series or flow. Think here of the role of ‘idents’—that
is, the logos of broadcasting companies, which fill the previous gaps or
silences between programmes (and sometimes now persist through
programmes in the corner of the screen), making possible multiple
associations within and across programmes.13 The true sequence in
broadcasting in these cases, Williams argues, is not the published
sequence of programme items, but a series of differently associated
units, some larger and some smaller than the individual programme. The
argument proposed here is that in marketing practices, the logo is
similarly able to secure the recognition of the brand as a constantly
shifting series of (variously related) products through its positioning. It
marks relations between products.
At its most basic, the repetition of a logo—which may be a name
(Nike), a graphic image (the Swoosh) or a slogan (‘Just do it’)—means
that when people are asked for examples of brands, most of them are
able to give some, displaying what marketers call ‘brand awareness’.
But marketers argue that ‘awareness’ must be supported, if a brand is to