A sentimental memory is a persistent goal for which the associated desires are illegible to you. You can only let such a memory go when the desires become legible enough to pursue via a simpler mechanism than recreating the remembered experience. Brands are sentimental memories.
Conversation
The idea of branding as differentiation is a misunderstanding of this psychological phenomenon. You don’t want to keep adding real features till you are ‘unique’. The competition can *always* copy features given time and expired patents. You want to tap into illegible desires.
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You do that by making the product an increasingly harmonious compression of its features, and adding features that add functionality while ideally also increasing harmony. “Design” in short. Strengthen the sentimental memory first, the capability second.
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This is why there is something essentially backward looking and reactionary about good design. It recognizes that the main feature being sold is not in the product at all, but in the user’s head: a memory they’d rather recreate than replace.
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This is of course rather dark commentary on us as consumers. We are slaves to the memories that made us feel good in the past. We fear killing the golden goose of an illegible desire that works by examining it too closely. Identity is slavery to your own memories.
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Equally we want to forget, deny, or repress bad experiences while retaining enough memory to avoid recreating them. That’s the logic of aversion/fear products and brands. Details left as homework. It’s just the positive desire story with a flipped sign.
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A growth-and-future oriented mind relates to memories in a very different and unnatural way that requires a kind of learning. You have to remember in ways that don’t let the future be imprisoned by the past.
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It’s not about forgetting. If you forget the past you have no future either. Just a blooming-buzzing-confusion if a present. To be present in the present, the past needs to be an unsentimental memory, and the future as open as it can possibly be. A maximum potential mind state.
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Think of this as the potential energy side of elan vital which is sort of a current/flux.
Could you reimagine consumption behaviors to catalyze and enable such states? What does branding look like for such products?
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I think this is the branding associated with the most hackable and designed-for-repairability type products. Where consumption segues towards production via maintenance. There is still sentimental memory but it’s of agency, not pleasure. An improvement.
Replying to
This can be even more reactionary of course as in sentimental memories of factory jobs. John Henry memories. Memories of mom’s apple pie might make you a sentimental bore but memories of being a steel-driving man might make you a resentful fundamentalist.
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Is there a way out of this bind? I think so. Still working out the details. Maybe I’ll continue this thread in a year or three if I figure it out.
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