Antilogo, Antibrand, & Mental Environmentalism:

I have thought and written a lot, of late, on the subject of information pollution or information noise. A short while back, I began noticing that people were speaking more and more about information noise, of the signal-to-noise ratio in the social information / attention stream, i.e. on Twitter.

Even more recently, I've been interested in the practise of Content Strategy. In essence, I am mainly concerned with the quality of content, and of content with SUBSTANCE.

Right now, however, I am concerned with the practise of Antibranding and Mental Environmentalism. It seems that many social activists are building hate sites which are positioned against big name brands. It appears many are believing more and more in anticapitalistic, anticorporation beliefs.

An example of an Antibrand is the Blackspot Shoe brand. Blackspot is an antilogo, it is open source, and Blackspot Shoes are trying to win part of the Nike shoe market. The difference between a Nike shoe and a Blackspot one, is the Blackspot Shoe is made with hemp and recycled materials. The difference is in the corporation: One promotes social values and is socially responsible, the other is not.

Since people speak of Brand Substance, I wonder if people will ever begin to speak of the Antisubstance of Antibrands. I'm not sure of the viability of the anticapitalistic attitude. I'm especially wary of people going into business with the aim of stealing another corporation's market share. Trying to saturate a market is capitalistic. I don't see how anticapitalists can be using capitalistic means and measures to get their point across. Using capitalism makes one a capitalist.

It seems to be a matter of CSR, or Corporate Social Responsibility, and Mental Environmentalism is beginning to take shape as a movement, where individuals and groups want to see the Infostream be cleaned up, as though it were being contaminated from the big corporations, as the environment has been polluted.

I understand the analogy but wonder about its viability as well. It's a nice metaphor and makes a nice story to talk about the pollution or contamination of the Information Stream, the Social Stream, etc., but is it viable? I understand the analogy of Noise with other Pollutants, i.e. Information Noise as Noise Pollution in the environment. Usually these metaphors are just that, metaphors, and fail to stand the test of time. Sometimes it's better to call a spade a spade, and not use so many metaphors.

The Antibrand Narrative: It is about being positioned against corporatism, against capitalism, against mass media, the usual anti-everything attitude. I am wary of those who position their « brands » or « antibrands » AGAINST something else. I find it much more interesting when someone develops their own unique position and differentiation without basing it on the antithesis of something else. I will always enjoy uniqueness and a distinctive style or message over a mere antithesis of something else.