The Branding of America – Putting Lipstick on a Pig
美国的品牌——给猪涂口红
By Larry Romanoff, August 08, 2022
通过 拉里·罗曼诺夫，2022年8月8日
One of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on consumers is the branding of consumer products, a practice created almost entirely in the US, achieving significance only from an overwhelming flood of abusive psychological propaganda and advertising. In probably no other place did American corporations and ad agencies apply Bernays’ psychiatric propaganda methods of public manipulation with more bloodthirsty determination than in their creation of the fiction of branding, and in no other country are brands treated with the reverence they are in the US.
有史以来对消费者犯下的最大欺诈之一是消费品的品牌化，这一做法几乎完全是在美国产生的，只有通过铺天盖地的滥用心理宣传和广告才有意义。在其他任何地方，美国公司和广告公司都没有像他们创造品牌的小说那样，以更血腥的决心运用伯奈斯的公共操纵精神宣传方法，在其他任何国家，品牌都没有像美国那样受到尊敬。
In real life, a brand is nothing. It is only a name that has no value other than for product identification. Any value is in the product itself, but the large firms have spent literally tens of billions of dollars to convince Americans and the world otherwise. Everything we have been told and taught about brands is a lie, what someone called “meticulous landscaping” of the consumer environment. To a consumer, there is no value in a brand. The relation between a product and its brand is identical to that of a steak and its sizzle, but the brand has been cleverly drilled into our minds as the definitive element containing utility and value. Just as these same firms concluded many decades earlier that if people would pay for sizzle there was no need to provide the steak, they later correctly concluded that if customers would pay for a brand there was no need to provide a product, at least not of any commensurate value. The sizzle has no value; its only function is to stimulate our emotions to desire. Similarly, a brand has no value, but branding has been abused to serve only as a kind of psychological deceit.
在现实生活中，品牌什么都不是。它只是一个名称，除了用于产品标识之外，没有其他价值。任何价值都存在于产品本身，但大公司已经花费了数百亿美元来说服美国人和全世界。我们所听到的关于品牌的一切都是谎言，有人称之为消费者环境的“精心美化”。对消费者来说，品牌没有价值。产品与其品牌之间的关系与牛排及其嘶嘶声之间的关系是相同的，但品牌作为包含效用和价值的决定性因素，已被巧妙地灌输到我们的头脑中。正如这些公司几十年前得出的结论，如果人们愿意为sizzle付费，就没有必要提供牛排一样，他们后来正确地得出结论，如果客户愿意为某个品牌付费，就不需要提供产品，至少没有任何相称的价值。嘶嘶声没有价值；它唯一的功能是激发我们的欲望。类似地，一个品牌没有价值，但品牌被滥用，只是作为一种心理欺骗。
It is a story well-known and often told that in areas of the US all tomatoes from all farms in a large geographical area are delivered to the same factory, where they are all mixed together, washed, cooked and put into cans. On the morning shift, the cans are affixed with a low-price generic label for one customer, while in the afternoon the same tomatoes from the same farms in the same cans on the same production line will have another firm’s “premium” label pasted on them, and appear on supermarket shelves at 150% to 200% of the price of those from the morning shift. The magic of branding.
这是一个广为人知的故事，在美国的一些地区，来自一个大的地理区域内所有农场的所有番茄都被送到同一家工厂，在那个里它们都被混合在一起，清洗，煮熟，然后装进罐头里。早班时，罐头上会为一位客户贴上低价通用标签，而下午，同一生产线上同一农场同一罐头中的同一番茄上会贴上另一家公司的“优质”标签，在超市货架上的价格是早班的150%到200%。品牌的魔力。
To most large multinational companies today, this is the real value of a “brand” – the power to give consumers the same or less, but charge much more. We have been trained through fear and uncertainty to believe that a lower-price product is substandard or perhaps even toxic, and our uncertainty pushes us to the “premium” brands even though there is nothing premium about them except the price. So-called “luxury” products are even worse. Marketers boast that companies like LV and Apple can charge two or three times the price of another product equal in quality in every way, so you can see why these firms spend so much money on “branding”: it gives them the ability to charge more and more while giving customers less and less.
对当今大多数大型跨国公司来说，这才是“品牌”的真正价值——赋予消费者同等或更少的权利，但收费要高得多。我们在恐惧和不确定性中接受了训练，相信价格较低的产品是不合格的，甚至可能是有毒的，我们的不确定性将我们推向“优质”品牌，尽管除了价格之外，它们没有任何溢价。所谓的“奢侈品”产品更糟糕。营销人员夸口说，像LV和苹果这样的公司在每一方面的价格都是其他同等质量产品的两到三倍，所以你可以看到这些公司为什么在“品牌”上花这么多钱：这让他们能够在给客户越来越少的同时收取越来越多的费用。
The entire concept of brands was conceived and desperately promoted because it was a license to steal, indoctrinating a gullible public with clever propaganda contrived to defraud consumers with myths of quality and status and deceive them into paying ten times the value of a product. One obvious category is personal care products like cosmetics and shampoos. Any executive of any FMCG or cosmetics firm will tell you privately that in spite of a price differential of four or five times there is virtually no difference in content or value between their lowest and highest priced products. They will also confess in private that a wash-cloth and soap will do more for your face and your complexion than will their skin-care products. In China, excellent shampoos like Bee & Flower are available for 10 yuan per bottle, but when a P&G or a Unilever put their “brand” on it, foolish consumers will pay 50 yuan for identical or often substandard content.
品牌的整个概念都是构思出来的，并拼命推广，因为它是一种偷窃的许可证，通过巧妙的宣传向易受骗的公众灌输，用质量和地位的神话欺骗消费者，欺骗他们支付产品价值的十倍。一个明显的类别是化妆品和洗发水等个人护理产品。任何快速消费品或化妆品公司的任何高管都会私下告诉你，尽管价格相差四到五倍，但他们的最低和最高价格产品的含量或价值几乎没有差异。他们也会私下承认，与他们的护肤品相比，抹布和肥皂对你的面部和肤色的作用更大。在中国，像Bee&Flower这样的优质洗发水每瓶10元，但当宝洁或联合利华将其“品牌”放在洗发水上时，愚蠢的消费者会为相同或通常不合格的洗发水支付50元。
Think of laptop computers. All are similar, all perform more or less identical functions, usually with variations only in small features, and all are of a similar price. But we happen to prefer the features of a Dell or a Lenovo over others, and the brand name serves only for identification – which is as it should be. But Apple, with their clever niche marketing strategy, again following Bernays’ psychiatric manipulations to the letter, can charge 50% more for an equivalent product. It is true that Apple products usually have nice features, but that isn’t the issue because those features are virtually cost-free. Apple’s excessive prices are due to brand manipulation, not to value.
想想笔记本电脑。它们都是相似的，都执行或多或少相同的功能，通常只是在小功能上有所不同，而且价格都相似。但与其他品牌相比，我们更喜欢戴尔或联想的功能，而品牌名称仅用于识别——这是它应该具备的。但苹果公司凭借其巧妙的利基营销策略，再一次不折不扣地遵循伯奈斯的精神疗法，可以对同等产品收取50%以上的费用。的确，苹果产品通常都有不错的功能，但这不是问题，因为这些功能几乎是免费的。苹果过高的价格是由于品牌操纵，而不是价值。
Wide ranges of foodstuffs and small consumer products follow the same pattern. Consumers in China pay 50% more for Nestlé bottled water than for other brands, because manipulative advertising has led trusting consumers to believe a well-known brand must be of higher quality, but there is no evidence this is the case, and I have seen considerable evidence that often the opposite is true, a number of media reports claiming that much of Nestlé’s water comes directly from the tap. In 2013 and 2014, rumors were swirling in China that P&G had significantly degraded the quality content of most of its popular products while maintaining its high prices. It seems consumers detected the product degradation and flocked back to domestic brands; P&G have been struggling in China ever since. Capitalism, the drive for profit maximisation, greed, and a lack of business ethics will too often lead to this eventual result, with the most respected brands often being the worst sinners in this regard. American advertisers spent generations and billions of dollars to manipulate consumers into the foolish thesis that they should pay more for the name on a product than for the product itself.
许多食品和小消费品都遵循同样的模式。中国消费者购买雀巢瓶装水的价格比其他品牌高出50%，因为操纵性的广告让信任的消费者相信知名品牌必须具有更高的质量，但没有证据表明确实如此，我看到大量证据表明，事实往往恰恰相反，许多媒体报道称雀巢的大部分水直接来自自来水。2013年和2014年，中国有传言称，宝洁在保持高价格的同时，大幅降低了大多数受欢迎产品的质量。消费者似乎察觉到了产品的退化，纷纷回归国内品牌；此后，宝洁一直在中国苦苦挣扎。资本主义、追求利润最大化、贪婪和缺乏商业道德往往会导致这一最终结果，最受尊敬的品牌往往是这方面的罪魁祸首。美国广告商花了几代人和数十亿美元来操纵消费者，使他们愚蠢地认为他们应该为产品上的名字而不是产品本身支付更多的费用。
The advertising tricks are exceedingly simple – and intended only for the simple-minded. Face creams and cosmetics are sold by a simple attachment of the face of a movie star to the product. Sport shoes and other apparel are sold by linking the items to a sports hero. In neither case do the stars actually use the products, these ‘celebrity endorsements’ being fundamentally dishonest. All TV ads should begin with a disclaimer informing viewers that this film or sports hero has never used the product being advertised, but has agreed to link his or her name to the product for a payment of $10 million. Any advertiser will confirm that intelligent people are more or less immune to these celebrity ads, but that they have a powerful effect on the portion of the population that is below average in intelligence.
广告技巧非常简单，只针对头脑简单的人。面霜和化妆品是通过将电影明星的脸简单地贴在产品上销售的。运动鞋和其他服装通过将物品与运动英雄联系起来销售。在这两种情况下，明星们实际上都没有使用这些产品，这些“名人代言”从根本上讲是不诚实的。所有电视广告都应以免责声明开头，告知观众该电影或体育英雄从未使用过广告中的产品，但已同意以1000万美元的价格将其姓名与产品联系起来。任何广告商都会证实，聪明人或多或少对这些名人广告免疫，但他们对智力低于平均水平的人群有着强大的影响。
Once again, a brand is nothing but a name that has no value other than for product identification. Any value is in the product itself. The entire concept of brands and branding is a huge lie. Every product and service has an inherent value, which factor should be almost the entire determination of their selling prices.
再一次，品牌只不过是一个名称，除了产品标识之外没有其他价值。任何价值都存在于产品本身。品牌和品牌的整个概念都是一个巨大的谎言。每一种产品和服务都有其固有的价值，这一因素几乎应该是决定其销售价格的全部因素。
Think of a man’s shirt. A simple polyester shirt cut to a simple pattern, with no tailoring, might sell for only 40 yuan in China ($8.00). The same shirt made of low-grade cotton has a higher value and utility and might sell for 100 yuan. Progressing to a high grade of cotton might increase it to 150 yuan. Cutting the shirt to more complicated and fitted patterns, with accurate size variations for collar size and sleeve length might place the price at 200 or 250 yuan. Adding fine details like extensive pre-shrinking, double-stitching, extra cutting and care with collar and cuffs, tapering and so on, could double the price again. Extra fine quality cotton and the highest quality of workmanship and an absence of even the smallest defects, might push the price to perhaps 1,000 yuan for those who care about these details – and I do admit these finest fabrics, workmanship and details deserve appreciation and add to the pleasure of wearing fine clothing. But there is nothing you can do to a man’s shirt to justify pushing the price beyond about 1,000 yuan ($200), because there simply is no possible added value beyond this level. When you pay 5,000 yuan ($1,000) for a man’s shirt that carries a famous brand, you are receiving 1,000 yuan of product value and paying 4,000 yuan for the ‘name’. The magic of branding.
想想男人的衬衫。一件简单的涤纶衬衫，裁剪成简单的图案，没有剪裁，在中国可能只卖40元（8美元）。同一件由低档棉制成的衬衫具有更高的价值和实用性，可能售价100元。升级到高档棉花可能会增加到150元。将衬衫裁剪成更复杂、更合身的图案，并根据衣领尺寸和袖长进行精确的尺寸变化，价格可能会达到200元或250元。添加精细细节，如大幅预缩、双缝、额外裁剪和衣领和袖口护理、锥形等，可以使价格再次翻番。对于那些关心这些细节的人来说，超优质的棉花和最高质量的做工，甚至没有最小的瑕疵，可能会把价格推到1000元左右。我承认，这些最优质的面料、做工和细节值得欣赏，并增加了穿上精美服装的乐趣。但是，你无法对一件男式衬衫做任何事情来证明将价格推到1000元（200美元）以上是合理的，因为超出这一水平根本没有可能的附加值。当你花5000元（1000美元）购买一件带有著名品牌的男士衬衫时，你将获得1000元的产品价值，并为“名字”支付4000元。品牌的魔力。
The brand marketers have so successfully promoted their twisted psychological agenda that we are made to feel proud and successful and superior when we wear their brand, but how foolish do you have to be, to believe this? Wearing a ‘Brand A’ shirt that costs $200 leaves us feeling ‘ordinary’, but an identical shirt containing no more added value from ‘Brand B’ for which we pay five times the price, leaves us feeling superior and proud. Why does that make sense to you? Overpaying by 500% for a shirt is not an occasion for pride, certainly not in our intelligence and, like it or not, we are still just as ‘ordinary’ as before. And poorer. We need to understand that pasting somebody’s brand name on our forehead does not make us either a better person or an object of envy.
品牌营销人员如此成功地推广了他们扭曲的心理议程，以至于当我们穿上他们的品牌时，我们会感到自豪、成功和优越，但你要相信这一点，你有多愚蠢？穿一件价值200美元的“品牌a”衬衫让我们感觉“普通”，但一件同样的衬衫却不含“品牌B”的附加值，我们花了五倍的价格，这让我们感到优越和自豪。为什么这对你有意义？为一件衬衫多付500%的钱不是一个值得骄傲的理由，当然也不是因为我们的智慧，不管你喜欢与否，我们仍然像以前一样“平凡”。而且更穷。我们需要明白，在额头上贴上某人的品牌并不会让我们成为更好的人或令人羡慕的对象。
I once had a long discussion over a coffee with a clerk from an LV store in Shanghai, and her assessment was this: “When I see a man paying 5,000 yuan for one of our shirts, I don’t think “Gee, he’s rich.” I think, “God, he’s stupid.” You might care to think about this.
有一次，我和上海一家LV商店的店员在喝咖啡时进行了长时间的讨论，她的评价是：“当我看到一个男人花5000元买我们的一件衬衫时，我不认为”天哪，他很有钱。“我想，”天哪，他真蠢。“你也许想一想。
Similarly, an LV handbag is just a bag and, even when well-made with good materials, it probably isn’t worth more than about 500 yuan ($100). The same is true for a piece of LV luggage that sells for 20,000 or 30,000 yuan ($5,000), surely 20 times the actual value of the product. And what benefit do we receive from this outrageous expense? A foolish and unjustified self-pride and the assumed envy of the 3,000 people at the airport who couldn’t care less about either us or our luggage. We might just as well stand on a podium in a public square, holding up our little treasure to the view of thousands of complete strangers, and yell out, “Look at me! Do you know how much I paid for this?”
类似地，LV手袋只是一个袋子，即使用料精良，它的价值也可能不超过500元（100美元）。同样的道理，一件售价2万或3万元（5000美元）的LV行李箱也是如此，肯定是该产品实际价值的20倍。那么，我们从这笔巨额开支中得到了什么好处？一种愚蠢的、毫无道理的自尊心和对机场上3000名乘客的嫉妒，他们对我们和我们的行李都不关心。我们不妨站在公共广场的讲台上，在成千上万的陌生人面前举起我们的小宝贝，大声喊道：“看看我！你知道我为此花了多少钱吗？”
This is precisely the mentality contained in that piece of luggage and in its advertising – emotionally immature and mentally defective. And that’s brand marketing. If we were to create a list of personal characteristics for which we would like to be noticed or admired, or appreciated, by friends and colleagues, that list would begin with items of our character, personal integrity, our personality. The brand name of our luggage or shirt labels wouldn’t even be on that list. Or at least, they shouldn’t be. And few of us would care about the opinions of our luggage by complete strangers at the airport. If you are one of those people who draws his confidence or sense of personal importance and self-worth from displaying a brand name on clothing or other personal effects, you might want to re-examine your sense of values.
这正是那件行李和它的广告中所包含的心态–情感上不成熟，精神上有缺陷。这就是品牌营销。如果我们要创建一个个人特征列表，希望朋友和同事注意到、欣赏或欣赏我们的个人特征，该列表将从我们的性格、个人诚信和个性开始。我们行李或衬衫标签的品牌名称甚至不在该列表中。或者至少，他们不应该这样。我们中很少有人会在意机场陌生人对我们行李的看法。如果你是通过在衣服或其他个人物品上展示品牌而获得自信或个人重要性和自我价值感的人之一，你可能需要重新审视你的价值观。
On the same note, apparel items like Levi’s or Calvin Klein blue jeans are neither premium nor luxury, but the same plain denim blue jeans we wear when we feed the pigs on the farm. They should sell for less than 250 RMB in China, about $40 in the US, because that’s all they’re worth.
同样，像Levi’s或Calvin Klein蓝色牛仔裤这样的服装既不是高档也不是奢侈品，而是我们在农场养猪时穿的普通牛仔裤。它们在中国的售价应该低于250元人民币，在美国大约为40美元，因为这就是它们的全部价值。
As well, there is no such thing as “super-premium” ice cream, no matter what Häagen-Dazs tries to tell you. They use the plain, ordinary ingredients that should go into every ice cream (but often don’t), then charge ten times what it’s worth. In any case, Italian gelato is infinitely superior to this Danish-sounding Jewish-American concoction. And much cheaper.
此外，无论哈根达斯试图告诉你什么，都没有“超级优质”冰淇淋。他们使用普通的原料，应该加入每一个冰淇淋中（但通常不会），然后收取10倍的价格。在任何情况下，意大利冰淇淋都比这种听起来像丹麦人的犹太裔美国人的混合物优越得多。而且更便宜。
Never knowing when to quit, Americans have applied branding psychiatry to everything including their universities, to the point where your tuition fees at Harvard are 15% educational product and 85% brand sizzle. The same applies to most every American product area, selling sizzle with very little underlying product, all following the principles laid down by Bernays many decades before.
美国人从不知道什么时候该退出，他们已经把品牌精神病学应用到了包括他们的大学在内的所有领域，以至于你在哈佛的学费是15%的教育产品和85%的品牌滋滋。同样的道理也适用于美国的每一个产品领域，在几乎没有基础产品的情况下销售sizzle，所有这些都遵循了Bernays几十年前制定的原则。
Americans are also very clever at re-branding their goods to take advantage of an inexperienced, gullible and trusting public. US-based luggage manufacturer Samsonite read somewhere that Chinese people like luxury goods, so they decided to pretend their McDonald’s luggage was a luxury brand, mostly by just increasing their prices by five times. It hasn’t yet occurred to Samsonite that a luxury product must actually be luxurious. Pizza Hut in the US is junk food like KFC, but has been re-branded in China as high-end dining. It isn’t. It’s a McDonald’s that sells bad pizza.
美国人也非常聪明地为自己的商品重新打上品牌，以利用缺乏经验、轻信和信任的公众。美国箱包制造商新秀丽（Samsonite）在某个地方读到中国人喜欢奢侈品，因此他们决定假装自己的麦当劳箱包是奢侈品品牌，主要是通过将价格提高五倍。新秀丽还没有想到奢侈品一定是豪华的。必胜客在美国像肯德基一样是垃圾食品，但在中国被重新命名为高端餐饮。它不是。这是一家卖劣质比萨饼的麦当劳。
Rolls-Royce have done something similar in China, charging about five times their prices in the West, then dealing with the violent consumer backlash by attributing the excessive cost to (non-existent) “Chinese taxes”. Their biggest lie was claiming they make “no more profit” on a car sale in China than in the UK or US.
劳斯莱斯在中国也做了类似的事情，在西方的收费大约是其价格的五倍，然后通过将过高的成本归因于（不存在的）“中国税”来应对激烈的消费者反弹。他们最大的谎言是声称他们在中国的汽车销售“没有比在英国或美国更多的利润”。
In the meantime, General Motors is profiting hugely from another re-branding scam, the fabricated tale of how Buicks were “popular with China’s leaders” when they were no such thing, Buick’s entire presence in China being nothing more than an historical fluke. A car was gifted to Pu Yi, China’s last Emperor, and eventually ended in the hands of Zhou Enlai who, according to the fabricated myth, loved the car as “the pride of his collection”. The hell he did. The car may have held sentimental value for its prior owner but evidence is thin to non-existent that either the Emperor or Zhou held that car in any esteem, and certainly not for its unreliability and countless other bad habits. Today, General Motors brought their crappy Buick automobiles to China, linked them with a gift of another crappy car given to someone 100 years ago, and re-branded it as venerated political history. And far too many Chinese are falling for this scam.
与此同时，通用汽车公司正从另一场品牌重塑骗局中大赚一笔。这场骗局是杜撰出来的，讲述别克在没有中国领导人的时候是如何“受中国领导人欢迎”的，别克在中国的整个存在只不过是历史上的侥幸。中国最后一位皇帝溥仪得到了一辆车，最终落到了周恩来的手中。根据编造的神话，周恩来喜欢这辆车，认为这是“他收藏的骄傲”。他真的做到了。这辆车可能对其前主人具有情感价值，但几乎没有证据表明皇帝或周对这辆车有任何尊重，当然也不是因为它的不可靠性和无数其他坏习惯。今天，通用汽车公司将他们的劣质别克汽车带到了中国，将其与100年前送给某人的另一辆劣质汽车的礼物联系起来，并将其重新命名为受人尊敬的政治历史。太多的中国人落入了这个骗局。
Swarovski “crystal” is another hugely successful lipstick-on-a-pig branding exercise. Swarovski is a Jewish-European firm that began life as a small company making cheap costume jewelry and who then used their accumulated knowledge of glass to make excellent optics for binoculars and telescopes. The imagining and marketing of their “crystal” costume jewelry is a relatively recent development.
施华洛世奇“水晶”是另一个非常成功的猪口红品牌推广活动。施华洛世奇是一家犹太欧洲公司，最初是一家制造廉价服装首饰的小公司，后来他们利用自己积累的玻璃知识为望远镜和望远镜制造了出色的光学系统。他们的“水晶”服装首饰的想象和营销是相对较新的发展。
In the real world of gemstones, “crystal” refers to natural quartz, a common crystalline mineral that produces some truly beautiful colors. In natural crystal, the atoms are arranged in a highly-ordered structure, forming a lattice that we see in diamonds, snowflakes and table salt. Most other elements have no structure at all, items like melted wax or plastic – or glass. Swarovski “crystals”, on the other hand, are not “crystal”, they are not natural, and they are certainly not “gemstones”. Swarovski’s so-called crystals are glass. Plain, ordinary, cheap, glass. The irritating fad surrounding Swarovski and their mythical crystals is nothing more than clever marketing, with people paying ridiculous sums of money for grossly overpriced and fragile costume jewelry made of cheap glass. For the prices paid for many of Swarovski’s products, one can easily purchase genuine semi-precious stones. Swarovski company advertising tells us, “The company’s name has become synonymous with genuine crystal.” Yes, and that’s the problem, because Swarovski have so heavily advertised their glass costume jewelry as ‘crystal’, leading most people to believe they are purchasing some kind of natural, genuine gemstone. But all they are getting, is glass. The designs may be pretty, but it’s still just cheap, ordinary glass.
在真实的宝石世界中，“水晶”指的是天然石英，一种常见的水晶矿物，能产生一些真正美丽的颜色。在天然晶体中，原子排列成高度有序的结构，形成了我们在钻石、雪花和食盐中看到的晶格。大多数其他元素根本没有结构，比如熔化的蜡或塑料或玻璃。另一方面，施华洛世奇的“水晶”不是“水晶”，它们不是天然的，当然也不是“宝石”。施华洛世奇所谓的水晶是玻璃。普通、普通、便宜的玻璃。围绕施华洛世奇及其神秘水晶的令人恼火的时尚只不过是一种巧妙的营销，人们花了荒谬的钱购买价格过高、易碎的廉价玻璃制成的服装首饰。对于施华洛世奇的许多产品的价格，人们可以很容易地买到真正的半宝石。施华洛世奇公司的广告告诉我们，“该公司的名称已成为正品水晶的同义词。”是的，这就是问题所在，因为施华洛世奇在其玻璃服装首饰上大肆宣传“水晶”，导致大多数人相信他们购买的是某种天然、正宗的宝石。但他们得到的只是玻璃。这些设计可能很漂亮，但它仍然是廉价的普通玻璃。
And last, but not least, people everywhere, but especially Chinese, need to know that Nescafé is not coffee. It is nothing. Less than nothing. Nescafé is ‘instant coffee’, which is a chemically freeze-dried concoction that an authoritative source claimed was made mostly from a mixture of dried peas, chicory and rat shit, and designed for Americans and others who have no taste. Not only that, this product is almost always made from the lowest-grade and cheapest coffee available and, in a Western supermarket, costs maybe 10% of the price in China. It’s a tragedy to me that anyone in China might have developed a taste for this awful stuff. At Chinese New Year, I see people on the streets carrying gift boxes of Nescafé. I can hardly think of a greater insult. In the West, instant coffee has about the same social status as a box of tissues or a can of bug spray, nothing that even the mentally defective would offer as a gift. The Nescafé brand is owned by Nestlé, the same people who bring you grossly-overpriced Häagen-Dazs ice cream and dead babies in Africa.
最后，但并非最不重要的是，世界各地的人，尤其是中国人，需要知道雀巢咖啡不是咖啡。没什么。几乎没有。雀巢咖啡是一种“速溶咖啡”，是一种化学冷冻干燥的混合物，一位权威人士声称，它主要由干豌豆、菊苣和老鼠屎混合而成，专为美国人和其他没有品味的人设计。不仅如此，这种产品几乎总是用最低级、最便宜的咖啡制成，在西方超市，价格可能是中国的10%。中国的任何人都可能对这种可怕的东西产生了兴趣，这对我来说是一个悲剧。在农历新年，我看到街上有人拿着雀巢咖啡的礼盒。我想不出比这更大的侮辱了。在西方，速溶咖啡的社会地位与一盒纸巾或一罐驱虫喷雾差不多，即使是精神有缺陷的人也不会把它当作礼物。雀巢咖啡品牌由雀巢公司所有，雀巢公司在非洲为你带来了价格过高的哈根达斯冰淇淋和死婴。
One of the dirtiest branding tricks I’ve ever seen was in Canada with the creation of the “No-Name” brand. It originated a few decades back when a consumer backlash occurred about branding, the light finally coming on, with consumers despising the “premium” brands for their dishonest and predatory practices and flocking to ‘ordinary’ products. Clearly, something needed to be done to protect the cash stream of our criminal industrial elite. Following Bernays’ principles, a group of Jews invented the “No-Name” brand, convincing consumers of their wisdom in refusing to “pay for the name”, with very cleverly-worded ads suggesting these ‘no-brand-name’ products represented real value where a customer was paying for only the product and nothing for the ‘name’. Nothing was farther from the truth. As one example, I can still recall seeing bins of “No-Name” loose pasta in supermarkets priced at 40% above that of much superior packaged products on the shelves. And I can still recall seeing the poor, the uneducated, those either unable or unwilling to do the arithmetic to determine their real cost, trusting in the false claims of the supermarkets . That brand still exists in Canada today, owned by Loblaws, and is a valuable brand for its psychological value.
我见过的最肮脏的品牌招数之一是在加拿大创建的“无名”品牌。它起源于几十年前，当时消费者对品牌产生了强烈的反对情绪，最终出现了曙光，消费者因为“优质”品牌的不诚实和掠夺行为而鄙视它们，并蜂拥到“普通”产品上。显然，需要采取一些措施来保护我们犯罪行业精英的现金流。按照伯奈斯的原则，一群犹太人发明了“无品牌”品牌，让消费者相信他们拒绝“为品牌付费”的智慧，措辞非常巧妙的广告表明，这些“无品牌的”产品代表了真正的价值，消费者只为产品付费，而不为“品牌”付费。没有比这更离谱的了。举个例子，我还记得在超市里看到过一箱箱“无名氏”的散装意大利面，价格比货架上的高级包装产品高出40%。我仍然记得看到过穷人，没有受过教育的人，那些无法或不愿意做算术来确定他们的真实成本的人，相信超市的虚假声明。该品牌至今仍存在于加拿大，由Lobalaws所有，因其心理价值而成为一个有价值的品牌。
A clarifying note to my American friends: there actually are products that are “premium” in the real sense of being of superior quality, costing more to manufacture and selling at higher prices. In no way do I suggest avoiding these, and would in fact encourage their purchase. My objections are entirely with those “brands” that offer no more than standard value but use manipulative hype to charge much higher consumer prices. It is worth your while to consider this, and to try to evaluate brands based on value. As one simple example, Hero jam is almost infinitely superior to all other brands on the market, expensive but worth the money. The same can be said for tools, automobiles, and many other products, but we need to differentiate between real value and no value. The issue today is that most famous “brands” offer only fictional value.
给我的美国朋友们一个明确的提示：实际上，有些产品在真正意义上是“优质”的，质量上乘，制造成本更高，价格更高。我绝不建议避免这些，事实上这会鼓励他们购买。我的反对意见完全是针对那些提供的价值不超过标准，但利用操纵性炒作来收取更高消费价格的“品牌”。值得您考虑这一点，并尝试基于价值评估品牌。举一个简单的例子，英雄果酱几乎比市场上所有其他品牌都优越，价格昂贵但物有所值。工具、汽车和许多其他产品也是如此，但我们需要区分真实价值和无价值。今天的问题是，大多数著名的“品牌”只提供虚构的价值。
Finally, for my Chinese friends, when you are done with your test-shopping of foreign products, turn your back on them and revert to your own domestic brands. In most cases, Chinese products are equal or superior to many of the Western brands, and offer far better value for your money.
最后，对于我的中国朋友们，当你们完成了对外国产品的测试性购物后，不要再考虑它们，转而使用自己的国内品牌。在大多数情况下，中国产品等同于或优于许多西方品牌，并为您的金钱提供更好的价值。
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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
罗曼诺夫先生的他的文章被翻译成32种语言，并在30多个国家的150多个外语新闻和政治网站以及100多个英语平台上发表。拉里·罗曼诺夫是一位退休的管理顾问和商人。他曾在国际咨询公司担任高级管理职位，并拥有国际进出口业务。他一直是上海复旦大学的客座教授，向高级EMBA课程介绍国际事务的案例研究。罗曼诺夫先生住在上海，目前正在写一系列与中国和西方有关的十本书。他是辛西娅·麦金尼的新集《当中国打喷嚏》的撰稿人之一。(第一章。2-对付恶魔).
他的完整文章库可在以下网址查看：
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
他可以通过以下方式联系：
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Blue Moon of Shanghai, Moon of Shanghai, 2022
版权所有（拉里·罗曼诺夫, 上海的蓝月亮, 上海之月, 2022