Hasta La Creative!

In today’s New York Times Magazine, “Counsumed” columnist, Rob Walker, examines at an academic study that indicates brands may have the power to shape our behavior. Not just purchasing behavior, mind you, the concept being forwarded claims that certain brands can make us run faster, jump higher, think more clearly, and so on.

The upshot of the original study, and numerous replications, was that the subjects subliminally exposed to Apple branding came up with more uses, and their uses were deemed more creative, than those exposed to the I.B.M. logo or to no logo at all. In other words, exposure to the Apple logo appeared to make people more creative.

One of the researchers, Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor of marketing and psychology at Duke, acknowledges that many of us — and not just the owners of I.B.M. — resist this finding because we are suspicious of the idea that brands affect us at all. Many people, Fitzsimons says, accept the idea that flaunting a brand broadcasts qualities you already possess or even aspire to: maybe creativity for the Apple loyalist, rugged individualism for the Harley consumer or athleticism for the Speedo buyer. But Fitzsimons and his colleagues say the process can work the other way around, that brands can not only reflect who we are but also affect how we behave.

Sounds far-fetched, but let’s think about this through another lens. Take a uniform, any uniform. Put that uniform on–be it a Yankees uniform, a soldier’s uniform, or a policeman’s uniform–and you will be transformed. Your thoughts will change and so will your actions.