Green products are all the rage in these climate-conscious days, and consumers are overwhelmingly indicating their preference for them. According to the ImagePower Green Brand Survey, eight in ten Americans believe it's important to buy from green companies, and most indicated they would be willing to spend more for these products. Some have called this growing awareness a fad – a fleeting moment in history. But labeling it as such would require us to disregard the mounting evidence that a fundamental shift is happening among consumers: a shift not only in how they make their purchasing decisions, but how they think about consumption in the first place. As Carmen Iezzi, Executive Director of the Fair Trade Organization recently commented, "People are suddenly starting to take notice about where their products come from.” If the last decade was defined by the lifestyle brand, perhaps this decade will be defined by a related, yet distinct entity: the political brand.

Understanding this shift requires a look back at the origins of branding, itself a young discipline. The practice exploded in the 1980s out of a growing sense that big business needed to divest itself of the costly act of producing goods (often by shifting such responsibilities abroad) and instead concentrate on the marketing of its products. Branding redefined the selling process by attaching products to an aspirational identity, in an attempt to inject soul into mass-produced wares. Buying a pair of Air Jordans was no longer just about copping a quality basketball shoe; it spoke volumes about who you were, or wanted to be.

In her 2001 corporate exposé No Logo, Naomi Klein argues that this shift has obscured the products we buy and the companies that create them, shrouding the production process in a layer of hype that removes us from the consequences of our consumption. Yet Klein may have overestimated a brand’s ability to keep this game up – and underestimated the Internet’s growing potential to tear down that carefully constructed image. Blogs and "media everywhere" have shattered the absolute control corporations once had over their brand messages, forcing a new kind of transparency among even the most guarded corporations. Those who have not embraced the new rules are playing with fire. In the information age of today, good news travels fast – but bad news travels faster. As David D’Alessandro, president of John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance was quoted, “It can take 100 years to build a good brand, and 30 days to knock it down.”