1. Brandon Harrigan
Professor Inazuko
Intercultural Communication
T/Tr 2:00-3:20
11/13/14
Brands
Last Thursday 11/6/14, at 5:00 p.m. I went over to Dr. Lucas’s presentation on
brands and I must say I was quite impressed with his lecture. In his introduction he first
discussed about what brands were, what is their meaning, and how it is displayed to appease a
buyer’s interest. I noticed that in brands there is an exchange value, where in advertising one
item can be exchanged for another item. He also discussed about how like money, brands are
limitless to the possibilities of gaining a viewer’s attention and furthermore buying the brand. He
also mentioned a lot about Aristotle and how he came up with the ways of looking at a brand or
an item and seeing its value. Throughout the presentation he showed many examples where
exchange value comes into play. For instance, there was this phone commercial for Verizon,
where the person had a perfectly good iPhone with him but decided to update or get a completely
new one even though there was nothing wrong with the old one. Another example was the Dirt
Devil vacuum commercial, where they re-enacted a scene from the Exorcist where the priest
notices the possessed girl about the ceiling unable to get down. For viewers this would be
particularly frightening, but the funny thing was there was an old woman on the floor above her
vacuuming the floor and the cause of the suction pulled the girl straight up resulting in her not
being possessed. Dr. Lucas used other hilarious examples to demonstrate his case on how brands
are displayed in today’s advertisements. To conclude his speech he left us of with this last pit of

2. information on exchange value “Brands are a form of currency, therefore brands are forms of
exchange value.