Brand Sacrality

Abstract

Taking a cue from the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, who wrote about the contrast between the sacred and the profane in religious thoughts, I compare brands and religions and suggest there are a number of similarities between the two and that brands can be seen as functional alternatives to religions. I then discuss the Apple Corporation and its logo of an apple with a bite taken out of it, which calls to mind the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This leads to a discussion of the sacred nature of department stores, which I suggest are functional alternatives to cathedrals, and to discussion of religions as brands and brands as religions. Changing brands of smartphones from Android to Apple is, I suggest, similar to being converted to a new religion. I conclude with a comparison of Harley-Davidson rallies and religious festivals, which reinforce the attachment of attendees to their consumer cults.

All known religious beliefs, whether simple or complex, present one common characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all things, real and ideal, of which men think, into two classes or opposed groups, generally designated by two distinct terms which are translated well enough by the words profane and sacred (profane, sacré). This division of the world into two domains, the one containing all that is sacred, the other all that is profane, is the distinctive trait of religious thought: the beliefs, myths, dogmas and legend are either representations or systems of representations which express the nature of sacred things, the virtues and powers that are attributed to them, or their relations with each other and with profane things. But by sacred things one must not understand those personal beings which are called gods or spirits: a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred …. The circle of sacred objects cannot be determined, then, once and for all. Its extent varies infinitely, according to the different religions.

Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

In short, the majority of men “without religion” still hold to pseudo-religions and degenerated mythologies. There is nothing surprising about this, for, as we saw, profane man is the descendant of homo religiosus and he cannot wipe out his own history—that is, the behavior of his religious ancestors which has made him what he is today. This is all the more true because a great part of his existence is fed by impulses that come to him from the depths of his being, from the zone that has been called “the unconscious.” A purely rational man is an abstraction; he is never found in real life. Every human being is made up at once of his conscious activity and his irrational experiences. Now, the contents and structures of the unconscious exhibit astonishing similarities to mythological images and figures.

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion