The cultural branding of Climate Change campaigns?

Brands are not just efficient communication tools

While the business application of new modes of branding have been explored in detail, the cultural and communication implications are perhaps even more significant and yet remain an under researched area.  Branding is no longer the simple art of product differentiation using a pleasant logo or clever product name.  Since the development of the mass media, branding has become a key driver in the process of the globalisation of product development and promotion strategy, but also the communication of ideas, cultural icons and social movements.  With the integration of ICT, low cost multimedia and extensive knowledge networks, the way in which branding has traditionally been used to promote products has been revolutionised, but the strategies that have supported the added value that we as consumers attribute to the products/services can now be extended to a range of cultural activities and identities as though they were commodities.  Likewise, the sophistication of consumers has meant that successful branding strategies depend upon the ability of a brand to resonate with complex, and shifting, cultural values.  The merging of these two tendencies has meant that cultural branding, and the branding of culture, are now interdependent forces in the social mediascape in which contemporary life is represented and performed.