OUGD501 - Studio Brief 01 - Study Task 06: Consumer Identities

This week's task was to write a 300 word summary of the extract that explains the relevance of the content in relation to commercial visual communication. Within this summary, I needed to consider how this will affect my understanding of a chosen target audience, and ultimately my practical outcome. There were quite a few points that I was able to pick up on in relation to my practical response.

Essentially, the extract focuses on how people are influenced by brands and other people's possessions, when thinking about own identity. Jansson-Boyd and Cathrine's explanation of the term 'downward social comparison' is particularly interesting in relation to my own practical work. They describe this as being where ‘people compare themselves to others who are seen as inferior’. As I am going to focus very heavily on branding and marketing, one point that could be further researched into is what physically makes something ‘inferior’? Whilst high-end brands, such as Gucci, Armani, Prada, are brands that may considered to be inferior in terms of how expensive and high-quality items are, less expensive street-retail brands, such as Nike, Supreme and Palace, could all be considered inferior in terms of an aesthetic look to a completely different audience of people. In this sense, to make a brand inferior, target audience must be critically analysed and considered in the marketing and branding process.

One very intriguing point made is that the use ‘realistic images to promote products has indeed been found to make people feel better about themselves, as people have been found to be more likely to compare themselves with those who are similar rather than dissimilar’. In the sense of advertising clothing and other people-related items, this is one point that is extremely relative to my practical work. For the marketing campaign, I am going to try and promote people finding their right size - rather than fitting into a size that they are led to believe as being acceptable by the media. Consumers should celebrate their actual identities, rather than wishing they looked another way through certain marketing ploys. Whilst this does not directly link to the issue of 'serial returners', it may suggest that people buy various sizes of clothes because they are worried about their appearances if clothing does not fit as well as seen online.