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If you buy what someone stands for - intellectually, philosophically or culturally - does this mean you will also buy them literally? Their taste, their likeness? A whole chunk of modern consumer culture is built on betting that the answer is yes, from celebrity product lines to the growing businesses of YouTubers like Bethany Mota, who have become fashion ambassadors.
But what happens when you add politics and morality to the mix? Such are the questions raised by the creation of Wiki License, the commercial arm of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, which is working with companies around the world to create a line of officially sanctioned "quality apparel and merchandise."
Not just T-shirts but possibly knits, leather jackets - even activewear. USB sticks! Briefcases! The sky's the limit!
In a world where individuals are increasingly encouraged to consider themselves a brand, it is a logical progression, if not an entirely comfortable one.
Indeed, the self-licensing of Assange is arguably the ultimate example of the phenomenon identified by Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland in 1997 compilation of essays from
The Baffler, "Commodify Your Dissent," though they were talking about the business world's co-option of the language of revolution, and Assange is using business to protect (and finance) his revolution, at least according to his representative.
Yet it still seems a somehow inappropriate idea (or so an ad hoc poll of branding experts, fashion folks and friends would suggest). After all, commercial branding is an essentially corporate, establishment idea, and Assange is the opposite.
There's no question that the monetisation of rebellion against the status quo has been going on for a long time; certainly since Fidel Castro helped popularise the concept by adopting a 1960 Alberto Korda photograph of Che Guevara as a symbol of his movement, which then migrated onto everything from T-shirts to bikinis.
It began earlier this year when Assange, the silver-haired WikiLeaks founder and current refugee in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, was approached by a licensing agent in Iceland called Just Licensing with the suggestion that he take control of and monetise his brand image. Olafur Vignir Sigurvinsson, WikiLeaks representative points out two developments. First, a high level of awareness, as revealed in 2011 by the market research firm Ipsos, which looked at perception of WikiLeaks in 24 countries and among 18,829 adults age 16 to 64. The survey showed approximately 80 percent name recognition and, in countries like India and Spain, a more than 80 per cent positive association with it. (Not surprisingly, its lowest rating came from the United States.) And second, the appearance of a host of non-official Wiki/Assange merchandise.
There is only one official e-commerce site (wikileaks.spreadshirt.com), which sells T-shirts, polos and sweats, as well as a messenger bag for $75, so far.
Why let other people profit form your image, Sigurvinsson asks, and risk diluting the message? Instead, Wiki License created a 46-page book of "brand guidelines," which includes rules about everything from colour scheme to font and Assange's approved portrait (an idealised line drawing of him gazing soulfully into what is presumably a better future with neatly trimmed beard and stylishly swept-back hair), not to mention a list of "non-accepted slogans," like "We steal secrets," "We attack corporations" and "Anti-secrecy."
In addition, a chunk of royalties from sales of official WikiLeaks merchandise will go to fund the nonprofit, though Sigurvinsson declines to say precisely how much.
@New York Times
