This Is Marketing by Seth Godin

And it’s even more important to remember that there’s no one right answer. The
symbol that works for one group won’t work for another. In Silicon Valley, the hoodie is a
symbol of status (I’m too busy to go clothes shopping). In a different context, though, for
a different audience, a hoodie in East London might put someone on alert instead of
reassuring them.
Why is Nigerian spam so sloppy?
If you’ve gotten an email from a prince offering to split millions of dollars with you, you
may have noticed all the misspellings and other telltale clues that it can’t possibly be real.
Why would these sophisticated scammers make such an obvious mistake?
Because it’s not for you. Because they’re sending a signal to people who are skeptical,
careful, and well-informed: go away.
The purpose of the email is to send a signal. A signal to the greedy and the gullible.
Because putting anyone else into the process just wastes the scammer’s time. They’d
rather lose you at the beginning than invest in you and lose you at the end.
The flags on SUVs are called flares
In 2018, the more expensive a car is, the more likely it is to have slightly exaggerated
flares around the wheels.
These flares are easier to make than they used to be (robots bending steel), but they
remain a signifier. A message about the status of the car and its driver.
They have no real function. The flare is more than six inches away from the wheel. But
they remain.
And in the aftermarket, you can pay extra for an even bigger flare, sort of surgical
augmentation for your car.
Do that too much and your status goes down with most bystanders, not up. Just as it
does with plastic surgery.
The Cadillac XTS goes even further. There is a tiny flare on the back of each tail light.
Again, no useful purpose, except to remind some people, just a bit, of the Batmobile (or
the 1955 Lincoln Futura).
These flags of status are everywhere we look.
Alex Peck points out that driving gloves have a big hole in the back. Why? Perhaps it’s
left over from when men with cars wore big watches, and the glove needed a hole to give
the watch a place to poke through.
Over time, we forgot the big watch and just kept the hole. It’s a symbol.
These leftover utilities have become symbols, and once a symbol becomes well known
(like the tiny details on an Hermès handbag) it’s quickly copied, manipulated, and spread,
until it ceases to be scarce and then becomes merely a signal of changing taste.
What’s your flag? Why would someone fly it?