Doppelgänger brand image

Updated on Dec 20, 2024

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A doppelgänger brand image is a company logo that has been modified in a pejorative manner. Such images are most likely to be spread via social media, or through websites of anti-brand activists such as Adbusters, and are often intended to highlight ethical issues regarding the product advertised.

A 2012 study concluded that doppelgänger brand images were able to negatively affect sales.

In a 2006 paper, Craig J. Thompson, Aric Rindfleisch and Zeynep Arsel suggest that doppelgänger brand images are a sign that "an emotional-branding story is beginning to lose its cultural resonance", and can be useful as a warning symptom.

Examples

The ""Joe Chemo" campaign criticized the product message of Camel cigarettes, and emphasized the harmful effects of smoking, by depicting the company's camel mascot as "a camel who wishes he'd never smoked cigarettes".

In 2015, a designer reinterpreted the Pepsi logo to represent a corpulent man. The intention was to emphasize the direct relation between consumption of sweetened soft drinks and obesity.

Humorous images were developed and distributed by customers of Maggi instant noodles and later mainstream media when the product was banned in India.

After General Motors launched the Hummer H2 in the mid-2000s, a creative viral Internet campaign called "FUH2" began. This campaign concentrated not only on the brand itself, but also on its owners who were portrayed as savages who cared about style more than the environment.

During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, comedian John Oliver satirised Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan with the parody "Make Donald Drumpf Again", referring to Trump's ancestral surname.

Nike's logo and slogan ("Just do it") appear in several images either altered or adjusted, often highlighting the company's use of sweat shop labor.

Following the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, several satirical logos reflecting a negative image were born out of a contest sponsored by Greenpeace./.

References

Doppelgänger brand image Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA