introduce the power of the many and the relief it provides from the unbearable demand for individuality. My goal in the chapter is documenting an interlinked psychic and economic problem: the incapacity and contradictions of the individual form as a locus for creativity, difference, agency, and responsibility. Together with chapter two, this chapter aims to dislodge from left thinking the individualism that serves as an impasse to left politics.
Two commercials illustrate the celebration of personal uniqueness characteristic of communicative capitalism. Both are for soft drinks. Both, in different ways, engage the limits conditioning the very individuality that they command.
On January 9, 2012, Dr Pepper announced a new advertising campaign, “Always One of a Kind.” The campaign’s first commercial features hundreds of people in red tshirts with white lettering converging in a crowd to march down streets and through a park. The t-shirts have slogans like “I’m One of a Kind,” “I’m a Cougar,” “I’m a Fighter,” and “I’m a Pepper” (one of Dr Pepper’s earlier slogans). The commercial’s soundtrack is a cover of the 1968 Sammy Davis, Jr. hit, “I’ve Gotta Be Me.” According to the press release accompanying the campaign’s launch, the red t-shirt wearers are Dr Pepper fans “proudly showing off their own original expressions on t-shirts describing what makes them unique and different from the rest of the crowd.”<sup>2</sup> In the optimistic words of the company’s director of marketing, the campaign “should serve as a catalyst for expressing originality and being authentically you.” Dr Pepper also offered fans the “opportunity to express their originality by ordering their own ‘Always One of a Kind’ t-shirts on DrPepper.com.
Putting aside the designation of customers as “fans,” the targeted demographic appears to be people who want to express their uniqueness. The commercial hails them as individuals, inviting them to identify with particular slogans and identities. Within Dr Pepper’s commercial imaginary, going to the streets isn’t collective rage; it’s individual self-expression, an opportunity to assert one’s individuality and stand out. Crowds are that against which individuals define themselves. The Dr Pepper Brand, in this imaginary, is a natural continuation of primary urges to establish unique identities, a helpful, vital supplement for the crucial task of distinguishing oneself from others.
The commercial’s presumption that people need support in expressing their originality—an authenticity catalyst of the kind a t-shirt might provide—gives it an ironic inflection. Augmented through the retro turn to Sammy Davis, Jr., the irony of expressing one’s authenticity via a branded soft drink invites another identificatory twist: are you like the crowd of those who really think that Dr Pepper t-shirts make you unique, or does your capacity to get the joke, to recognize that originality necessarily exceeds any branded media image, make you different from, even superior to, the rest of the crowd? The fact that some of the slogans are reappropriations of offensive labels “cougar” and “mamma’s boy,” for instance—opens up this alternative. The wearers of these shirts are unique in their strength, confident enough to assert the labels, to own them. Thus, a further irony: their courage is amplified by the crowd. The energy of the commercial, its feel, comes less from what’s written on the t-shirts (the majority of which can’t be read) than from the sea of red that carries people along. The celebration of difference and creativity comes from the enthusiasm of a crowd where people march shoulder to shoulder, pumping their fists and taking confidence in their collectivity. Even as collectivity as a trope is co-opted into the service of amplifying individual courage, the fact of, the need for, this amplification cuts through the individualist message as it acknowledges the power of the crowd.
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