Brand

 -noun

1. Kind, grade, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark, or the like: the best brand of coffee.

2. A mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.

What does it mean to brand?  I pulled up the definition of “brand” to provide a reference and, as expected, branding alludes to marking a product or even an animal.  But what about branding a person?  If you looked at a political campaign, you could easily say that the person running for office, in a way, has branded themselves.  During today’s Walk-In Wednesday, we took a closer look at branding with the Contemporary’s Registrar Cole Root.

Cole, who studied advertising and marketing at Webster University, shared with us Our Brand is Crisis directed by Rachel Boynton,  a documentary that focuses on the 2002 elections in Bolivia.  The documentary follows Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (Goni), the presidential candidate at the time, and shows how he used American campaign strategies to brand himself and win the election.  Cole chose this film because of how it ties into, Corey Escoto’s work in the Great Rivers Biennial.  Escoto’s work, playing off of the idealistic views of the United Nations, includes an entire fleet of vehicles that have been branded as the Global Repair Service.  After seeing how the marketing team in the film literally ‘brands’ Goni, I couldn’t help but to think how this process is done for our own presidential candidates.  Just like a tube of toothpaste or a new sports drink, political candidates adopt a slogan, a color scheme, and a platform.  They have commercials, jingles, and logos.  Thank you for hosting today Cole. It was a wonderfully poignant topic/film/discussion…definitely something to chew on. 
-Elizabeth