Branding through a justice lens.
As more of us are creating and growing our work, it is absolutely crucial that we re-think about our own design processes as it pertains to branding.
Historically, branding is a racist methodology to mark ownership of enslaved people. Perhaps you might be thinking, “but that’s in the past, we don’t do that anymore. Branding is different now….”
Branding through a justice lens invites us, justice co-conspirators and allies to challenge this thinking by asking “How has branding in my industry excluded and exploited people in our respective industries?”
Narrowing down to an industry that I am most familiar with ‘yoga’ - a multi-billion dollar industry that benefits of the exploitation of South Asian culture with the money makers being yoga brands like Lululemon, Alo Yoga, Spiritual Gangster and yoga studio brands such as Bikram Yoga, Corepower Yoga and many more.
When branding goes unchecked, brands create taglines such as Nama’slay, Good Vibes Only, We are all one and make you think that you have to be able to touch your toes to do yoga or that yoga must exist in a hot room.
Catchy taglines, yes AND profits are being made at the expense and exploitation of South Asian culture.
So, how do we grow our work while disrupting dominant narratives perpetuating by branding?
1) Unpack the dominant narratives of your industry.
Dominant narratives can be seen by who comes up when you google ‘(insert industry name) brands’. What do you see as you scroll through the first few pages of Google Search results?
2) Now, tie it to social location.
Social location is a concept that is introduced in a Sociology course that describes people’s position in culture and society based on their points of privilege and oppression. I talk more about this in this blog post on ‘What is social location’ and also a podcast talking about ‘Social location, Power and Privilege’ with Shannon Crow of The Connected Yoga Teacher.
Consider how your race, gender, age, ability, religion, sexual orientation (and much more) creates a privileged (or lack of) lens in the industry that you are in.
For example, in the yoga, fitness and fashion industry - white, skinny, cis-gender, heterosexual bodies is the brand narrative currently being peddled
So, an example of a brand challenging that now is Yitty by Lizzo - flipping the size script from 4XL to XS.
3) Make accountability a keystone of your brand strategy.
Don’t wait until the latest news feed becomes fodder for your feed and stories. The people at AMPLIFY RJ recently posted this and I’d like to share it with you as you think about making accountability part of growing your work:
I do this work because violence, domination, and punishment are endemic in our culture and we need to build skills to do things differently.
