"Eh?" said Lord Pomfret. "Advertisements? I throw 'em all in the waste-paper basket. Can't think why they spend all that money on advertising. Guinness and all those things. If I want a glass of Guinness I have it. Don't need any advertisements for that."

With all due respect to his gruff lordship, who was speaking in Angela Thirkell's 1938 novel Pomfret Towers, it seems that advertising has pretty much always been with us, at least in recent centuries. And in today's global economy, advertising is an ever-morphing, all-devouring monster that sneaks up from all sides, changing its look to lure us in.

Thus companies and consultants, and through them consumers, are continually embroiled in identity-making frenzies that cost millions. The mill churns out more major image makeovers and chaotic product changes in a year than all the cattle rustlers ever born burned onto stolen steers. The name of the game is branding, ladies and gentlemen, and don't you forget it.

In his well-researched, tautly written, and humorously observant book OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder, just published by PublicAffairs, Santa Fean Lucas Conley explains why branding is the business mode du jour. He also explains how it can be responsible for the sudden disappearance of that shampoo you loved or the fact that your cellphone carrier changed names and logos three times in less than a year.

There's nothing wrong with advertising per se, said Conley, who reads from and signs copies of OBD on Saturday, June 14, at Garcia Street Books. (C-SPAN2's Book TV will have a camera crew at the event, so if you go, comb your hair.) Lord Pomfret might not need a Guinness reminder, but other people do, and customers need to know what products and services are available and how they might fill their needs.

But these days, advertising has become obsessed with branding and rebranding to the point that product incarnations are picked up and dropped faster than humans shed dead skin cells. That's why Conley chose The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion as the book's subtitle.

"This concept of branding rose out of advertising over the past 50 years, maybe 75," Conley said during a recent interview. "The idea being, initially you had a product and brand and advertising that you projected with a bullhorn to the world. You marketed it." People trusted a product because it delivered what the hype promised — no less and sometimes more.

Within the past 20 years, though, "it's all been top down," Conley said. Rebranding now flows down from executive suites, driven by the demand for more profits in a gladiator-tough competitive market. There may be nothing at all wrong with the product; but how can it be made to appeal to people more? Perceived improvement becomes more vital than actual positive changes.

"People have been using the cart before the horse example," Conley said. "I remember a guy who worked in magazines. The art director literally asked him to design brands of magazines before they thought of what the content would be or what they would cover. You could tell from his e-mail note to me how frustrating it was.

"It's not satisfying to create an outfit when you don't know who will wear it or a plate when you don't know what will be on it. You get to that point and the idea sells, not the substance."

Conley isn't exaggerating, as he shows in the introduction to OBD. Ninety-four percent of Japanese women in their 20s own something made by Louis Vuitton even though the French company charges 20 percent more for its goods in Japan than it does in France. Of Japan's 127 million citizens, 40 percent, or about 51 million, own a Louis Vuitton product. Some Japanese women even forgo having children in order to afford a Louis Vuitton purse or suitcase. That has a lot more significance than saving your pocket money for the next Hello Kitty backpack.

America is no better off. In scores of firms in Cincinnati, Ohio, known as the "fertile crescent" of branding, and in laboratories and focus groups around the country, specialists in sound, smells, taste, and touch work feverishly to link products to our self-identity — even figuring out how to give a particular fast-food chain's straws a special sound when customers gurgle up the last of a soft drink.

"Procter & Gamble, in Cincinnati, is the biggest brander in the world," Conley said. He added that two other branding behemoths — Macy's and Kroger — are headquartered there, too. No wonder so many branding firms have set up shop alongside them.

"A big motto at Procter & Gamble is they're always looking for unmet needs. This is why you've seen this recent revolution in so many products. Every product from P&G, they're trying to make it an experience — a nicer smell, a better feel, a different way to deliver the product. How can we resell this to you and repackage it in different ways?"

That might mean changing products in tiny ways, rebranding their looks and mottoes, and then putting them out in the market. Conley cited M&M's candies as a prime example. Thanks to laser printers and fast packaging machines, M&M's can put the name and picture of a new NASCAR winner or Olympic champ or film tie-in star on its packages — or special greetings on vanity candies — as soon as a deal is inked and have them out in stores in an astoundingly short time.

If sales response isn't immediate, a product can be yanked just as quickly. "In the past five years, my wife has gone through four face washes," Conley said. "She picks one, she likes one, then they discontinue it. They flip through these little product offerings over and over. In part, it's to get it on the shelf at Wal-Mart. It's what they call, in the business, feeding the monster."

As part of keeping products flying off shelves, manufacturers strive to make us feel that they give us a special edge, Conley said. But sometimes they go so far beyond basic advertising as to be ludicrous.

Take paper products: facial tissue, paper towels, toilet paper. "It's all pretty much the same stuff. They're selling pulped wood fiber. How do you brand it, make it stand out?"

The Brawny paper-towel brand has done so several times by changing the look of its cartoon lumberjack. (Other familiar product-character changes over the years include Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, and Mrs. Butterworth.) At one point not that long ago, Conley writes, the illustration was changed after a branding executive decided the lumberjack looked like a '70s porn star.

Another attempt came from Kleenex. "They have a program called 'Let It Out,' with a theme song and commercials on the Web site," Conley said bemusedly. "They try to get people to come online and talk about things that make them cry — happy or sad. There's even a suicide chat site! That, to me, that's not Kleenex's job. They're not here to build community around the Kleenex brand.

"We are our own worst enemies in this," Conley admitted. "We are complicit. We are the partner in putting [brand] tattoos on our foreheads, or selling the name of our child to a company, or putting advertising on our cars." All of which, as Conley shows in OBD, are going on around us.

"What surprised me about corporate America," Conley said, "was [its] acceptance of the idea to need to dump a lot of money into this rebranding. Look at AT&T and Cingular. A few years ago, it was AT&T. Then it was Cingular, and then it went back again. That was at least 60 million, maybe 100 million [dollars], each time. They could have set up a lot of cities with better service for that rather than flipping a name and logo back and forth."

Ultimately, Conley cautioned, the customer is never right in the branding process — the business consultant is. "They want to show us a world where our problems are solved, our needs are met, and the future is brighter. This is a for-profit relationship. Do all you want to get close to the customer, but profit is the ultimate goal.

"I think the best products out there still adhere to the old [advertising] model. The brand recognition rises from the product or service."

Details

Lucas Conley: OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder — The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion, book signing and reading

3 p.m. Saturday, June 14

Garcia Street Books, 376 Garcia St.; 986-0151