Brands/Consumers and the Expression Game (and the Princess Bride)

You know the game. “I’m trying to fool you. You realize that I’m trying to fool you, and I — realizing that — try to fool you into thinking that I don’t realize that you have realized that I am trying to fool you.”…It’s what sociologist Erving Goffman describes as Expression Games. Strategic thinking, in its most fundamental form, is about translating modern culture and isolating the calculative, gamelike aspects of human interaction and how it relates to brands. This battle is what brands must undertake these days in order to connect with a fragmented consumer in a digital world. It’s about truly knowing your consumers and staying a step ahead of them. Which brings to mind the battle of wits between The Man in Black and Vizinni in The Pricess Bride: “It’s so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy’s? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.” We all know how this exchange ends, but I suggest you read Goffman’s Strategic Interaction to better understand how we communicate with one another — and how we, as brand shepherds, guide the brand strategy into this perilous territory…

IT HAS WORKED! YOU'VE GIVEN EVERYTHING AWAY! I KNOW WHERE THE POISON IS!