Select one brand or marketing campaign that Klein and Satel and Lilienfeld have not examined

Select one brand or marketing campaign that Klein and Satel and Lilienfeld have not examined

ARE WE WHAT WE BUY? ENTERING A CONVERSATION ABOUT BRAND MARKETING

In essay #4, you will enter in conversation with scholars who have written about branding and marketing. Craft an essay in which you examine your own relationship to a particular brand or approach to marketing. Your audience is educated peers. Respond to the following prompt. (You do not need to produce this prompt in your essay. If you do, it will not count toward the required word count for the essay.)

Are brands invading our brains? Are we what we buy? Writers as diverse as Naomi Klein and Sally Satel and John O. Lilienfeld suggest that marketing has gone far beyond simply advertising products to producing lifestyle brands and even marketing to consumers at the neurological level. According to these writers, we seem to have entered a world where consumers buy ideas, not products.

In your essay, select one brand or marketing campaign that Klein and Satel and Lilienfeld have not examined. Describe that brand or marketing effort in detail, using your own language and your own analysis. Your goal is to figure out exactly how that brand strives to define itself and earn customer loyalty. Connect your description to the ideas of Klein and Satel and Lilienfeld. Explain which aspects of branding and/or marketing are being used, and evaluate the quality of the brand and/or marketing approach.

Potential subjects include:
The brand of the Android operating system
The marketing strategies of Reebok
What strategies do online universities use to promote themselves?
How Sprite uses athletes to establish its brand
How Levi’s jeans earns customer loyalty

These are only examples – the options are nearly limitless! Be sure that you write about a brand that has not already been analyzed by Klein or Satel and Lilienfeld.

Guidelines for Essay #4

Length/Due Date: approximately 800-1,000 words, due Sunday midnight Central Standard Time (CST).

Style/Format: This, as all essays in EN106, should be formatted in a standard scholarly format. (Most students follow MLA or APA guidelines, which are outlined in Easy Writer.) No matter what format you follow, be sure to do the following:

Use 12 point, Times New Roman font, double-spaced.

Use 1-inch margins top, bottom, and sides.

Although no cover page is needed, you should include your name, my name, the course number/title, and date at the upper left-hand corner of the manuscript.

Research & Documentation: This essay must include formal references to the work of Klein and Satel and Lilienfeld. Use your skills of quotation, paraphrase, and summary to incorporate these writers’ perspectives, and be sure to provide in-text citations using a standard scholarly style, such as MLA or APA. And, of course, you must also provide appropriate documentation for any other sources you cite.

File format: Please submit your essay as a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file. These formats are available in most word processors, including Google Docs and Open Office, and will ensure that your instructor is able to comment on your work.

Works Cited/References: Your essay should include an appropriate bibliography, with an entry for each individual source you reference in the body of the essay.

Titles: Include a descriptive title at the beginning of your essay that tips your readers off to your thesis. Do not format your title with quotation marks, boldface, underlining or italics.

Cover pages: Please do not format your essay to include a cover page.