WHEN DISEASES HAVE LOGOS

Don’t panic folks. This isn’t just another ill-informed, pub quiz diatribe on COVID19.

More an exploratory rant about how, with the help of our relentless 24 hour news machines, we love to turn everything, including diseases, into a brand. Why we do it. And why we surrender so much power to these brands.

Three recent events got me thinking about this. First, was my prostate cancer diagnosis in February. Second, the aforementioned pandemic. And, third, the news that some sperm banks are now accepting donations from HIV positive men.

I have no wish to sound frivolous - believe me, finding out the Big C is sitting inches away from the Not-So-Big D (you can joke about this stuff) is not a frivolous matter. However, brands and their messaging are potent weapons - we believe and trust them at our peril.

Like the sports brands who die on the cross to empower us all, yet have no interest in empowering the 12 year olds who slave away in Vietnamese sweatshops.

Just because you say something in a very loud voice and have a cool logo does not mean you are there for the greater good of man. In the same way a disease that can kill you, may not actually go on to do just that.

Brands are, for the most part, about perception. Not reality.

Which brings me on to my prostate.

We all know what ‘Brand Cancer’ is all about. And it’s not nice. But things have come a long way from the dreaded death sentence days. When you couldn’t even say the actual word for fear of sending waves of dread around the room.

Maybe the less afraid we become of the C word, the more likely we will be to find out if we have it. And then be able to do something about it before it gets the upper hand.

You only have to look back at the paralyzing terror AIDS brought to the 80s to know the power of a killer message (you thought I’d forgotten the earlier HIV reference). I knew people who avoided getting tested simply because knowing they had it was a fate worse than death. And now HIV carriers can donate sperm!

I’m not about to reach a deal-clinching conclusion here - I did say this was a rant in the first paragraph. What I will put out there is this. If we believe the approved messaging too readily and surrender power to ‘brands’ that threaten us, anxiety will forever hold dominion over rationality. And everyone knows that frightened people are a helluva lot easier to control.

As for those virtuous sports brands, they can all say a big hello to my Not-So-Big D!