Marketing communication: principles and practice

A C O M M U N I C A T I O N C O N C E P T
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Material identification
results from goods, possessions, things –
I am like you because we own the same model of car or have the same
taste in clothes, music, books, etc.
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Idealistic identification
is based on shared ideas, attitudes,
feelings, and values. We attend the same church or are members of
the same political party, etc.
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Formal identification
results from arrangement, form, or
organization of an event in which both participate.
Identification is the opposite of division.
Belief systems are a strong source of identity. We may use selective
perception, diversion, appeal to authority, misrepresentation, defamation,
jargon, etc. to defend our identity. The ‘skin-encapsulated ego’ (Watts, 1972)
is at once driven to individualism (difference and competition) and yet craves
social contact (the derived identity needs other people). We use self-deception
to distort our relationships and day-to-day lives as our means of psychological
self-preservation (Goleman, 1985), yet we derive our sense of identity from
those same people, things, places, institutions, and informational structures
with which we relate (see Toffler, 1970). Watts, among others, has urged
that we learn to balance the nourishment and protection of our individuality
and separateness with that of our belonging and unity. Healthy society
requires healthy members whose actions are not dominated by the ego and
are appropriate to the situation at hand. Satisfaction of self-centred needs
cannot accomplish this healthy state. The derived self cannot be allowed 
to dominate. Is the effect of modern-day ‘branding’ to create ‘mindless
xenophobia’? In a society in which consumption has replaced production
and creation as the primary seat of self-definition, is tribalism rekindled on
consumption decisions through sought relationships (in the marketplace),
in place of kinship? ‘All of us become at some point, and for however little
time, what we buy’ (Tomlinson, 1994: 35).
Identity provides the means by which individuals create and survive social
change. Tomlinson (1994) sees the debate on consumerism as essentially
about stages of cultural transformation – fundamental shifts in values – about
confusions over class, regional, generational, and gender identities. Style, for
example, is a visible manifestation of power relations and a process of creating
commodity images (cf. ‘imagination’) for people to emulate and believe in.
Fromm (1966) argued that one way we reject our sense of impotence and
try to restore our capacity to act on the world is to submit to and identify
with a person or group having power. By this symbolic participation with
another person’s life, we have the illusion of acting, when in reality we only
submit to and become part of those who act.