Let’s get the negatives out of the way. Neither M&Ms nor the MARS group needs to be promoted. We don’t need to market candy to children. Do we need a two-story shrine to M&Ms candy in Times Square? Is this another sign of the dumbing down of society? Why does a product like this need to be branded and line extended ad nauseum? Is this further evidence that shopping has now become America’s favorite pastime and that, as Reverend Billy has warned for some time, that we have excessive consumerism and a nation of shopaholics? Perhaps, but this is not the best economic times for anti-consumerist messages.
The M&M Store, at 1600 Broadway in Times Square, like the Coca-Cola or Warner Brothers stores, is a quintessential example of branding merchandise and merchandising a brand. In this retail store, you will find application of the M&M iconography to every possible consumer item. And, of course, there is plenty of candy – self0serve M&Ms in large, transparent tubes in a staggering array of colors. For those who like blue, for example, you can get Blue, Dark Blue, Light Blue, Teal, or Aqua. See more photos of the interior of the store here. The exterior of the store has an enormous, spectacularly bright LED panel display, which I previously featured in Let’s Have a Parade.
Technology is not the only thing in our world to see enormous advancement. Business and associated vocabulary have also become highly refined. Brand has become a buzzword in business marketing, and the term now goes beyond its original business usage. The meaning of brand at one time was much narrower and more specific, usually limited to consumer products such as food or appliances. Pepsi or GE was a brand.
The first time I saw the word brand used in a broader sense was in a TV interview with Joseph R. Francis, the founder of Girls Gone Wild, a series of sexually explicit DVDs. In that interview, Francis referred to the Girls Gone Wild brand. I was surprised to learn that filming young, naked girls could be a brand or franchise, or at least referred to as such. Since that time, I have become very sensitized to the use of the words brand and branding as well as merchandising itself.
But let us not forget another part of the picture, lest a curmudgeon squash all of life’s fun. These are M&Ms – one of the icons of our childhood which is virtually synonymous with pleasure. And they don’t melt in your hands 🙂
Confession: I succumbed to the overwhelming presence of merchandise. 🙁 I bought an assortment of M&Ms and a nicely styled M&M glass. 🙂
