Brand Branded

There was once in the 1980's where branding was unlike today. Today, teen's interest in brand can no longer be mere differentiation or to distinguish one's identity from that of the group and the converse, that of conforming or fitting in a group (Quart 2003).

"You don't need to buy a copy of Teen Vogue or turn on an episode of The Hills to see young people wearing expensive designer labels anymore -- just take a tour of a local high school."
-Rachel Naud 2008

Although Malaysia to a certain extend have not yet been affected by the brand virus as we are still wearing school uniform in our high school, it is nonetheless worrying that brands have actually invaded the inner security of a teens life.

Quart further states that companies feign ignorance to the fact that those under twenty-five are now the fastest group filing for bankruptcy (Quartz 2003). This only proves that companies have turn their attention to the young market.

A simple image with outrages price and has the coolness factor (from http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/apple.media/thumb/200/200/Nike-800.jpg)

Advertisers know exactly how to appeal to teenagers and if enough of the teenagers gets influence, wants might change into needs. Advertisers uses multimodal format in order to grab hold of teens attention (Walsh 2006).

Moreover, visual images are almost present in all commercial portraying a person acting cool or activity while holding on to a product, this helps increase clarity and enchance understanding as well as draw the teen further into the advertisement (Putnis & Peterlin 1999).

Furthermore Professional advertisers knows how to make full use of a document to attract a teenager even the type of word they used could effect the readers. After all, the wrong word type could cause the lost of more then half the readers (Wheildon 1990).

Therefore, it is important that we be aware of marketing and advertising gimmick that are there to brainwash us into accepting purchasing a product. Moreover, these are professionals whose sole job is to woo us into buying things making it for important for us to be even more aware on the information we consume everyday.


Naud R. 2008, 'Brand hungry teens benefit from value lessons' http://www.canada.com/topics/lifestyle/parenting/story.html?id=9aee3282-2642-4b15-a482-d7a23bc0d529 viewed June 08 2008.

Putnis P. & Petelin R. 1999, Professional Communication: Principles and Applications, 2nd ed, Prentice hall, Sydney, pp. 195-206.

Quart A. 2003,'Branded', Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, Perseus, Cambridge MA., pp.3-21

Walsh, M 2006, Australian Journal of Language and Leteracy, The ‘texture shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australia, vol.29, no.1, pp.24-37

Wheildon C 1990, 'Communicating or just making pretty shapes: a study of validity -- or otherwise 00 of soe elements of typographic design, 3rd ed, Newspaper Advertising Bureaus of Australia, North Sydney.