walk the line me july09r

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32 MEDIA July 2009



33MEDIA July 2009

Unless you live on a sweet potato farm inLancaster, Pa., brands are a big part of your life.

You wake up in your combed-cotton Ralph Lauren sheets to youriPod playing though your Bose sound system. You brush your teeth

with Colgate Total Clean Mint Paste before stepping into a hot show-er and scrubbing your scalp with Burt’s Bees shampoo bar. Afterdrying off with Jonathan Adler, you brew a trusty cup of StarbucksBreakfast Blend (or maybe you prefer Stumptown, Gorilla, Lavazzaor any of the countless other specialty roasters) and pour a glass of Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice. You know what you like.Your favorite brands are your favorite for a reason — you like theway they look, taste, feel. You trust them to be what you need themto be. But what if something changed? What if, for some reason, youcouldn’t find your favorite brand?

In February, Tropicana famously learned that a picture is worth alot more than a thousand words. The classic American juice compa-

ny changed its package and, among other things, removed the imageof the orange with the candy-striped straw that had illustrated the“never from concentrate” product since Anthony Rossi pioneeredthe flash pasteurization process in 1954, making it possible forfreshly squeezed juice to stay just that for three months (the packag-ing itself, the wax paper cartons commissioned by the American CanCompany, also boosted shelf life). Then one day it wasn’t so easy tofind: “The new package looked so generic,” says one customer. “Iassumed there was something wrong with the company. So I boughtthe Minute Maid instead.”

“The original design is not great design,” concedes Paula Scher, a

partner at design firm Pentagram. “It’s just familiar.”But consumers weren’t satisfied with simply switching brands.Some were outraged (surprising, perhaps, given that the actualproduct hadn’t changed), bombarding the company with emails andforming Facebook groups. It soon became clear that this was morethan a failed attempt at the “new look, same great taste” switcharoo.Tropicana quickly realized that the people buying their product werebuying more than just a carton of juice: They were buying somethingfamiliar, even nostalgic. “It’s kitsch,” says Scher. But consumers“like it because they know it: It’s your familiar old buddy.”

Walk Walk thethe

line line Brands with

cult followings

deal with the

paradox of the

passionate

By Courtney Humiston



34 MEDIA July 2009

John Gerzema, chief insightsofficer at Young & Rubicam Group

and coauthor of The Brand Bubble,

says Tropicana underestimated thevalue of its brand, which includes

such intangible assets as logo, asso-

ciations, sounds (the Intel “ding”),

trademarks, reputation, even smells.Paul Woolmington, founding part-

ner at Naked Communications,

has gone so far as to suggest bot-tling the “clean, metallic” smell

of an Apple store: “It’s the smellof intuitive technology,” he says.

These intangible assets, accordingto Gerzema’s research, have become

increasingly important to consum-

ers over the past few decades. Usingthe patented model he calls the

Brand Asset Valuator,

Gerzema and his col-leagues determined

that brand values rose

in their contribution

to shareholder value

from 5 to 30 percentover the past 30 years.

“We have moved froma tangible to an intan-

gible economy,” says

Gerzema. “Consumers

discriminate based onemotional imagery.”

In Tropicana’s case,

Gerzema argues that the value lies inpeople’s associations with the pack-

aging: “It reminds them of child-

hood and breakfast, which is one of the most intimate times of the day.”Whether or not you agree with

his fond assessment of breakfast

(maybe your mom was in the habitof burning toast and throwing

shoes at you, and you would

like to forget both child-

hood and breakfast), it wasat least comforting to know

that you could find the juice

you like (No Pulp, Some Pulp,

Lots of Pulp, Calcium + Vitamin D,or Light ’n Healthy) and get thehell out of the cooler section before

you froze to death. Zain Raj, CEOof Euro RSCG Discovery (and decid-

edly a No-Pulp devotee), was pret-

ty thrown when the new cartons

appeared on the shelves. “I wasn’tsure if I was buying the right one

and I ended up getting the one with

‘some pulp.’ Changing the packag-ing ruined my ritual. I couldn’t

start my day the way I usually

do.” Which is, he believes, whereTropicana went wrong: Most peo-

ple probably aren’t too passionate

about their juice, but they knowwhat they like. “Tropicana made

it more difficult to buy their prod-

uct. A brand that makes things

Branch Davidian leader and polygamist David Koresh famously

tooled around Waco, Texas, in a classic 1968 GM Camaro SS.

Koresh was the perfect match for this muscle car. The testoster-

one-fueled preacher allegedly bedded hundreds of teenage girls,

bullied a flock of submissive churchgoers and fought the FBI like

his name was Rambo. Although the manly Koresh did not survive

the fiery “siege of Waco,” in which the Davidian Mount Carmel com-

pound burned to the ground, the Camaro did endure — complete

with dents from the FBI assault vehicle that rammed into it — and

was later sold at auction. Take that, bankruptcy.

It’s a foolproof marketing technique — turning customers into slav

unthinking, devoted followers of products. In other words, zombies

It’s a strategy that can create legions of pod people dedicated to

particular brand, leaving all rivals in the dust. The best customer

brand could have is an actual cult follower.

“The people who join cults are most likely to be like you,” wr

adman Douglas Atkin in “The Culting of Brands: When Customers

Become True Believers.” “The popular image of cult members is

that they are psychologically flawed individuals, gullible and des-

perate. While some do conform to this image, the majority do no

Demographically, they tend to be from stable and financially com

becoming a cult brand becoming a cult brand

Change your

brand too

much and

next thing you know,

people will

be drinking

juice from

concentrate.

David Koresh and Camaro



35MEDIA July 2009 MEDIAuly 2009

harder has no place in my life.”Scher agrees. “What the design

company did was faux modernism,

so it looked like a generic prod-uct . . . . The cleanness took away

the character,” and, of course, the

familiarity. Scher argues that the

container “could have been tweakedso it maintained recognizability but

became a better designed object.”

So why did they change? Raj,who is currently working on a book

about brand rituals (brands that

are closely associated with certainbehaviors), explains the phenom-

enon, which may include the efforts

to “improve” the packaging foreverything from soft drinks to cable

networks, thusly: “Marketers get

tired of a brand decades before con-

fortable homes and are above average in intelligence and education.

They are, in fact, a desirable target audience.”

On the flipside, it seems reasonable to assume that the best

spokesperson a brand could have is a cult leader. One need look

no further than Oprah. When she puts her seal of approval on

miracle butt paste, tubes fly off the shelves.

Sure, maybe there have been a few, shall we say, unfortunate

relationships between brands and cult leaders, but the savvy

cult marketer shouldn’t be deterred. It’s hard to think of a bet-

ter product placement than the Beatles and the Manson family. Of

course, there have been other partnerships. —Richard Linnett

Be careful that a larger brand

doesn’t steal your thunder: The

Jonestown tragedy in Guyana, in

which more than 800 members

of the Jones cult committed mass

suicide, has forever been wrongly linked to Kool-Aid. The popular

phrase “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” referring to people who blindly

follow authority, is one of the lasting legacies of the Jonestown

massacre. And yet the powdered drink that Jones laced withcyanide to kill his followers was not Kool-Aid but a knockoff rival

called Flavor Aid, a product of

the Chicago-based Jel Sert

Company. Flavor Aid still com-

mands a sizeable share of

stomach, as marketers like

to say. But nobody

says “Don’t drink the

Flavor Aid,” do they?

Rajneesh was an Indian mystic who

promoted promiscuous sexuality and

became known as the “sex guru.”

After traveling the world, he and

his followers settled in Oregon and

established an ashram that attracted

notoriety for prolific sexual hijinks,

drug use and a large collection of

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. The Bhagwan

(it means “blessed one”) bought hisfirst Corniche in 1980, had it plated

in armor and afterward demanded a

new Rolls for each day of the year,

ordering two a month from deal-

ers. All told, the Bhagwan owned

more than 100 Rolls Royces; the

commune featured a service center

staffed by Rolls engineers. The car

company was pleased, especially by

the Bhagwan’s “Rolls-Royce-a-day”

diet. “We thought this was a splen-

did idea,” an

executive told

the Associated

Press. They

were not so happy,

however, with the

Bhagwan’s taste in

customized paint jobs;

many of the motorcars

were covered in psychedelia.

o obtain a really devoted following

Jim Jones and Kool-Aid

Rajneesh Chandra Mohan Jain and Rolls Royce

Applewhite founded Heaven’s Gate, a

UFO-worshipping sect in San Diego that

believed the world would end with the

appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet. On

arch 26, 1997, 39 members of the cult,

orders from Applewhite, committed mass

icide by swallowing phenobarbital washed

own with vodka. All of them died wearing

rand new, identical, black and white Nike

apparel — shirt, sweats and sneaks —apparently in preparation to “just do it”

in the afterlife.

arshall Applewhite and Nike



36 MEDIA July 2009

sumers do.” They are sitting in theiroffices surrounded by the brand,

thinking and dreaming about thebrand, whereas most consumers

think about it once a day (when

they pour or purchase their O.J.), or

maybe not at all.Realizing its mistake in less

than two months, (thanks, in part,

to social media’s power to generatemomentum so quickly) Tropicana

followed in the footsteps of another

infamous failure, New Coke, andwent back to the original.

Juice may, after all, just be some-thing to go with your bagel or your

Champagne, and your devotion to

the brand isn’t likely to go any fur-

ther — like, say, getting it tattooedon your back. While researching his

book, Buying In, Rob Walker, writer

of the weekly “Consumerist” columnfor The New York Times, talked to a

young man who had literally branded

himself with aPBR

logo tattoo, giv-ing the explanation: “It’s part of my

subculture.”According to Walker, PBR’s revival

as the beer of choice for a certain

segment of America’s 20-some-

things began in a skater bar inPortland. The cheap local beer went

belly-up and the bar replaced it with

PBR. What happened next was a

Shepard Fairey–worthy experimentin real-life consumer glory. The

It doesn’t take a genius account

planner to know that trace amountsof cocaine recently found in Red

Bull’s new cola product will not

bring down that brand. On thecontrary, this special ingredient is

already elevating Red Bull’s statusas an edgy product and energizing

its die-hard fan base.How does Red Bull do it? How

does it stay on top? Simple: It’s

not just a drink, it’s a way of life.In other words, Red Bull is a “cult

brand,” which any marketing egg-

head will tell you is a product that

has a special charisma, commandsunprecedented customer loyalty

and needs little to zero advertis-

ing to keep sales humming.

Cult brands are nothing new.Case in point: Remember Hadacol? At one time

it was one of the most potent cult brands around, and a

distant “coozan,” you might say, of Red Bull. Hadacol wasinvented in 1945 by Dudley LeBlanc, aka “Coozan Dudley,”

a peripatetic Cajun salesman, the Billy Mays of his genera-

tion, who was so well liked he was elected state senator.While in office, Coozan Dudley was taken ill and treated

by a doctor who spoonfed him a multi-B-vitamin drink. He

recovered, stole the recipe (and later admitted to it) and gave

a name to the new elixir by mashing up the initials of hiscompany — The Happy Day Company — and adding the

letter “L,” for LeBlanc.

Hadacol was a B-vitamin drink (mixed with nicotinicacid) that tasted foul — like swamp water, some said — but

found a huge following, just like Red Bull. Unlike Red Bull,

Hadacol was not promoted as a sports or energy drink; itwas billed as a tonic for virtually any health issue.Hadacol ads claimed the pungent syrup relieved ner-

vousness, irritability, indigestion, chronic fatigue, dyspep-

sia, loss of appetite, loss of strength, inability to sleep, lossof weight, malnutrition, skin disorders, eye disorders, gas-

siness and constipation, writes Floyd Martin Clay in Coozan

Dudley LeBlanc: From Huey Long to Hadacol, a biography of

the “Hadacol King.” Testimonials from devoted custom-ers (the brand evangelists of their day) went even further.

According to them, Hadacol could cure everything from

epileptic fits to the “after effects of a cold” (though tellinglynot a cold itself). It was even said to be an aphrodisiac and

a viable substitute for antifreeze in cars.The drink became a sensation, despite the fact that it

didn’t actually cure anything, at least not to the satisfactionof serious health professionals. Cynics claimed its popular-

ity derived from its own special ingredient: alcohol. Coozan

Dudley insisted alcohol was only used as a preservative. Theelixir contained 12 percent ethyl alcohol, as much as wine

and strong beer. Basically, Hadacol was the equivalent of a

Red Bull cocktail.LeBlanc produced his own ads, but more important, he

Big surprise. Red Bull really does give you wings, exactly as advertised.

Step Right Up Step Right Up The rise and fall of Hadac



37MEDIA July 2009

blue and white cans had inhabitedthe coolers of working-class men for

decades but hadn’t been aggressive-ly marketed in nearly as long. Pabst

Brewing Company had, in fact,

stopped brewing its own beer alto-

gether in 2001 (contracting produc-tion to Miller) and, says Walker, the

label had resigned itself to certain

doom: “They were essentially wait-ing for the people who drink it to

not be around to drink it anymore.”

calling it “anti-fashion fashion.”PBR became a part of their anti-

consumerist identity: an accessorylike, say, Crumpler bags, white

V-neck T-shirts, fixed-gear bicycles

and skinny jeans. By assigning

meaning to the brand based ontheir own values, it became some-

thing personal, what they wanted to

communicate about themselves tothe world. “Brands are essentially

cultural information,” says Walker,

Lacking any fresh association, itwas easy for young members of

this subculture (the very kind thatClint Eastwood’s Pabst-swilling

Walt in Gran Torino would prob-

ably scowl at) to make it their own.It became the “underdog” of beers,

says Walker, who interviewed

some of the early second-wave con-

sumers. “They liked that they weredrinking something that society

had rejected.” Woolmington agrees,

created a cultural movement around the product by staging

elaborate events called Hadacol Caravans that traveled the

country. According to Clay’s book, the caravans consisted of “seventy Hadacol trucks, twenty-five automobiles, two air-

conditioned buses for the performers, one photo-lab truck,

three sound trucks, two beauty queen floats, three airplanesand two calliopes.” The stars on hand for each event ran

the gamut from George Burns and Gracie Allen, to Mickey

Rooney, Chico Marx, Jack Dempsey, Bob Hope, DorothyLamour, Hank Williams and “Coozan” Dudley himself, whowas fast becoming a celebrity in his own right.

The caravans hawked Hadacol comic books, T-shirts, lip-

stick and water pistols. The company distributed “CaptainHadacol” cards to kids, redeemable for the drink. Coozan

Dudley hired comedians to write quips about Hadacol’s

alleged aphrodisiac properties and its alcoholic potency.

He commissioned a hit song, “Hadacol Boogie,” that wentlike this:

A-standing on the corner with

my bootle in my hand,

And up stepped a woman, said

“My Hadacol Man.” She done the Hadacol Boogie, Hadacol Boogie

Hadacol Boogie, Boogiewoogie

all the time

All of this hoopla helped crown Coozan Dudley the “mil-lion-dollar medicine man.” According to Time magazine,

Hadacol sales grossed $24 million in 1950. At the height of

the brand’s success, the Federal Trade Commission steppedin and played killjoy, ordering LeBlanc to stop advertising

the therapeutic properties of Hadacol and to cease making

claims that the drink assured good health and restored

youthful feelings. The only claim the FTC allowed LeBlanc

to make was that the drink was good for you if you needed

the ingredients in it.But that wasn’t what killed the Hadacol phenomenon.

The product did not die because it consistently reneged on

its brand promise to cure almost all ills. What brought itdown was a combination of brand fatigue and bad business

practices.In 1951, LeBlanc sold the brand to a New York financial

group for $8 million. When the new owners opened upthe company’s books, they found it had been operating in

the red, with more money spent each year on advertising

and Hadacol Caravans than the brand brought in. Also, thecompany had racked up major debt, as much as or more

than the sale price of the company, and the new owners

found themselves enmeshed in 14 major court proceedings

with creditors.The new owners panicked, eliminated nearly all adver-

tising and put a halt to the caravans. The fact that Coozan

Dudley, joined at the hip to the Hadacol brand like Jared

Fogle and Subway sandwiches, was no longer associatedwith the product didn’t help. Although Hadacol lingered on

store shelves into the ’60s, without a constant barrage of

media support and the familiar Dudley face, the fad beganto fade. On Dec. 6, 1968, after years of ownership changes

and multiple bankruptcies, the Hadacol brand was put up

for auction, the trademark was sold for $200 to a speculatorand Hadacol vanished into final obscurity.

As Coozan Dudley was fond of saying: “If you don’t tell

’em, you can’t sell ’em.” Richard Linnett



38 MEDIA July 2009

referring specifically to the kid with

the tattoo: “The PBR logo, to somepeople, has meaning as a symbol

that relates to identity.”

Consider the identity of someone

wearing an image of Che Guevaraemblazoned on a belly-T. Michael

Casey, in his book Che’s Afterlife: The

Legacy of an Image, tells the story of a young woman he met in Argentina

who wore her Che T-shirt every day.

When interviewed by Casey and his

team, she evaded questions aboutthe Cuban revolution, but was able

to talk about the image on her

T-shirt with zeal. “She didn’t knowthat much about Che as a person,

but the T-shirt meant a great deal,”

says Casey. Since the famous photo-

graph of Guevara was taken in 1960,it has appeared, controversially, on

everything from belt buckles to

mud flaps (and countless biceps, of course). Some Che loyalists (of the

person, not the brand) say this hasminimized his achievements and his

sacrifices. Casey disagrees: “What

makes an icon powerful,” he says,

“is how the image is received. Peopleinvest their own feelings and project

their ideals onto it.... It becomes a

very personal thing — my hopes,my wishes, my dreams — and it’s a

good thing. We have to accept that

symbols change meaning; to becomedefensive about its past is to deny thepower of the present.” In that sense,

to some people, the PBR logo means

“beer” about as much as Che’s image

means “Viva la Revolución.”

Barack Obama also has been criti-cized for being less of a savvy politi-

cian and more of a brand: a brand

with a following devoted enough —a cult, if you will — to make him

the most powerful elected official in

the world. Indeed, he has all the ele-

ments of a brand, including a goodlogo with a close connection to con-

sumerism. It’s no coincidence that

the Obama logo so closely resemblesAmerica’s favorite soda cans. Scher

says that when Coca-Cola redesigned

its logo to look more modern, it start-

ed “a mini design revolution.” Pepsi,of course, followed suit, and by the

time Obama came around, people

were prepped for clean contempo-rary design. Anything “elaborate or

decorative [like McCain’s image,perhaps?] became outdated.” Caseyisn’t troubled by the duality of the

person and politician, Obama and

Brand Obama. “You can’t have one

without the other,” he says. “It has tobe sexy in some way, because these

things matter to us and they always

have. The alternative is Big Brother.”Which begs the question: Who cre-

ated Brand Obama? His campaign

or his consumers? The answer, as



39MEDIA July 2009

with any true cult brand, is both.Fiskars has been making scissors

since 1649. Is it any surprise that

they have developed a devoted follow-ing over the years, given how many

scrapbooks and quilts there are to be

made? Fiskars successfully tapped

into the passionate crafting com-munity in 2006 when they started

the “Fiskateers,” a community for

crafters sponsored by the brand butcontrolled primarily by the consum-

ers. “The truth is,” says Casey, “whatmost brands want to do is transcend

being a cult brand and get huge.”This can be difficult to accomplish

without alienating loyal customers.

Change your brand too much andnext thing you know, people will

be drinking juice from concentrate.

Woolmington identifies two problemsbrands face when they try to make the

transition from being a much-loved

cult brand to being a much-loved

“huge” one. First, as a brand becomes

more popular, consumers are likely toask themselves, “Do I want to belong

to a club that everyone is a memberof?” Woolmington emphasizes the

need to redouble efforts among cult

followers, or “nurture the zealot,” as

he puts it. He uses Nike as an exam-ple of both a cult and a mass brand.

“Nike feeds the sneaker pimps,” he

says, “but you can also walk into justabout any shoe store and get a pair.”

The second obstacle: “You have

to be careful when you become ‘theman’,” he says. Lose your edge,your uniqueness and someone else

will replace you. PC, for example, is

The Man to Steve Job’s Mac. Virgin

(music, airline, finance) became suc-

cessful as an extension of founderRichard Branson’s personality: char-

ismatic and provocative, in contrast to

other old fuddy-duddy brands in theindustry. (“In the beginning it was

just about the business,” Branson

pany and its sole product is inten-tionally vague, even evasive. While

the drink appears to be targeted spe-

cifically at someone — extreme ath-letes, ravers, students — the brand

identity is actually pretty nebulous.

You could argue that what Red Bulldrinkers have in common is a taste

for the edgy and faintly dangerous.

But what does this really mean?

Obviously, any attempt to articulatesuch a thing would immediately

destroy it. The great thing about amurky brand is that you can let yourcustomers fill in all the blanks.”

Is there something strange and

vaguely creepy about

the important rolesbrands play in our

lives? That we depend

on them, that we needthem, that we use them

to identify ourselves,

to communicate with

the world, to meet peo-

ple? That we give ourbrands meaning and

personality? That weform relationships with

our brands? (“People

talk to their coffee,”

says Raj, “especially if it’s Starbucks.”) That

we turn people into brands? Casey

is optimistic. “There is nothingdemeaning about people project-

ing their ideals onto something,”

he says. “Symbols have always beena way of reducing complex ideas

into something simple.” Christians

have been wearing the cross for cen-

turies. Yes, it represents a certainideology, but ask most people who

wear it around their neck what it

means to them and chances are youwill get a very different, and very

personal, response. Don’t even get

them started on why they picked the

beer they drink.

has been quoted as saying — “nowit’s about the brand”).

PBR’s success, says Walker, was

50 percent phenomenon and 50 per-cent marketing strategy: “They did

smart things with their lucky break.”

Sensitive to its consumers’ delicate

sensibilities, the company beganquietly (no giant banners or girls

in PBR-emblazoned bikinis) spon-

soring skateboarding competitions,bike-messenger gatherings and the

like in cities across the country. Itwasn’t long before the brand had a

whole new personality.A cult brand does not become

successful because it is the best or

the only. There are lots of scissorsthat cut things just fine and more

than one cheap beer on the market.

What cult brands have in common is

their consumers have filled the brandwith meaning and personality. “Not

too many successful brands start by

allowing the consumers to decide

what they mean,” says Raj. “Mosthave to establish a clear identity.…

Here’s what we can do for you.”

The less a brand tries to meansomething to a certain target demo-

graphic, the more open it is to

meaning whatever users want it tomean — as happens in the 1980

comedy, The Gods Must be Crazy,

where a tribe in the Kalahari desert

finds an old Coke bottle, and it soonbecomes an integral part of their

daily lives. Throw a product in frontof people, let them decide what itmeans and soon they may not be

able to live without it.

Walker uses Red Bull as an

example of this kind of marketing— what he calls murketing : “Usually,

the wizards of branding want to be

extremely clear about what theirproduct is for and who’s supposed

to buy it. Red Bull does just the

opposite. Everything about the com-

Pabst was

essentially

waiting

for the

people

who drink

its beer

to not be

around to

drink it

anymore.

walk the line me july09r

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