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ANCHORING THE ESSENCE OF BRAND ICONS Benoit Beaufils, March 1st, 2011
A young Jewish man excitedly tells his mother he's fallen in love and that he is going to get married. He says, "Just for fun, Ma, I'm going to bring over 3 women and you try and guess which one I'm going to marry." The mother agrees. The next day, he brings three beautiful women into the house and sits them down on the couch and they chat for a while. He then says, "Okay, Ma, guess which one I'm going to marry." She immediately replies, "The one on the right." "That's amazing, Ma. You're right. How did you know? The Jewish mother replies, "I don't like her." Predictability makes the joke. Though you can’t guess what the end line will be, it will always confirm something you know already – re-assert the invariable, iconic character of the archetypal Jewish mother. ANCHORING THE ESSENCE OF BRAND ICONS
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Now what is a Jewish mother? It’s about love – too much love. It’s about suffering. It’s about interfering with the lives of sons. It’s about taking all the space It’s about talking all the time. It’s about complaining… It’s about so much that the description – or the stories – never end. Yet it is incredibly precise and clear. That’s because the archetypal Jewish mother is an icon. Something that, through times, variations or shapes, remains what it is and is loved for it. What makes an icon: embracing complexity Iconic brands pose the same problem. We all know what they are about. Coke. Apple. Greenpeace. Google. Bacardi. Nike. Levi’s…We recognize their timeless value through various moments and appearances, and we love them for their ability to remain what we know they are. But defining them is difficult. A thousand words are not enough – though we think we know all about them and we land up spending a lot of time and words with our clients doing so. Defining them is important. Sometimes they go astray, losing the beauty of who they are, without their brand stewards realizing it (at least before the sales start tumbling). The reason why icons are so difficult to define is that words tend to limit, curtail what is, fix it and hence kill ANCHORING THE ESSENCE OF BRAND ICONS
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it. Once it is to narrow, the magic is lost. Once it is fixed, the magic is lost. But when it is too broad, the magic is equally lost. The Christian church struggled with this for long – having to deal with the biggest icon of them all. How do you define, explain, make God be felt – when He is so much and yet indefinable? The trinity was invented (around the 3rd century AD) as an attempt to deal with that difficulty. The trinity was smart because it was paradoxical. God is not just in “the Father”, that dominant, powerful but distant character. God is not just in Jesus, that all too human, strong and frail character that is so close to us. God in not just in the Holy Ghost, that spirit of faith that lives in everything beautiful. God cannot be contained in any words, which would limit it. But by making the Faithfull’s mind circle from the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Ghost, the theologians tried to create a system that captured the magic, the mystery of God, without ever reducing it. Freud dealt with understanding another icon of complexity – Man. He leveraged another form of trinity to offer some clarity. We are our instincts, the intuitive, burning force of desires that propels us. He called that the “Id” in us. ANCHORING THE ESSENCE OF BRAND ICONS
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We are our ability to deal with the reality, to think, to manage our own selves and get results in an organized manner. He called that that “Ego”. We also are our ideals, our aspirations, our purposes, as we created them or as we borrowed and internalized them from our authority figures. He called that the “Super-ego”. We are all that together, though none of that in particular (luckily!). Is Freud’s model right or wrong? It is not the point – it works. It is an operational tool that brings some order in complexity, whilst recognizing the richness of that complexity. Because it acknowledges paradox and tensions, it is a model that reflects our humanity. The trinity of iconic brands. Mandela is a fascinating leader. He is the living icon of Africa and a total hero for the planet. Why? Mandela had a mission. He devoted his life to the construction of a country that would be free of apartheid. That is worth a tremendous respect. But beyond a mission, Mandela had a calling. His struggle was as much about respect, fairness and creating a more bearable way to live in society, as it was about the South African anti-apartheid movement that he embodied. ANCHORING THE ESSENCE OF BRAND ICONS
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So when Mandela struggled for human respect, fairness and dignity, he was fighting for something that did not just serve his interests, he was fighting for something we all care for. That calling connects with every one of us. But Mandela also had a unique way. His fight was not about defeating the white. His fight was about uniting human beings. He realized early that was his fight was not so much about liberating blacks from bondage, as it was about liberating white people from fear. His smile – his biggest asset – positioned him as a smiling warrior, not a vengeful one. The iconic power of Mandela is not just in his Calling, nor in his Mission, nor in his Way. It is in how these three aspects of what is represents combine to move us. Well, iconic brand work in the same way. Capturing their Calling, their Mission and their Way helps capturing their magic without narrowing it. Iconic brands have a mission. For Coke, offering uplifting refreshment. For Apple – providing intuitive technology. For Levi’s – crafting rough & timeless wear.
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Iconic brands have their way – the mode of engagement to the world that they embodies, and that people can borrow. This way can be defined by an archetype, by values, or by an attitude. For Coke, it is purposeful positivity – about engaging into the world and transforming it into a better place. For Apple, it is freedom – well, just like for Levi’s. And you wondered why Steve Jobs always wore a 501? But iconic brands also have a calling. Like heroes, they have a role to play, a fight to fight. They view themselves as providing meaning, as shaping the world. And in a world where L’Oréal is more present on TV than the Pope and the Dalai Lama together, they really do! Coke’s calling is to make the world a better place – through celebrating optimism. The calling of Apple is to enable creativity. The calling of Levi’s is to empower everyone to explore a personal, own identity. Their callings are meaningful. They are the purpose that defines the brand – the company, and the people that move towards them – and they shape these businesses. In itself, the brand calling is sterile of course. It only takes power when it is brought to life through products and attitudes that people can borrow: when combined with the mission and the way of a brand. As for the Christian trinity, the brand Trinity forces us to ANCHORING THE ESSENCE OF BRAND ICONS
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define a brand in a fluid fashion – embracing its purpose, its actions, and its values into a more powerful perception. Coke is about uplifting refreshment. It is about purposeful positivity. It is about making a world a better place through optimism. Optimism would be naive if it was purposeless. Positivity would be vain if it was not powered by upliftment. Upliftment would be pointless if it did not have a purpose. Through these separate elements, Coke comes together in a powerful manner, irreducible to a single element. A human foundation. Now, there’s a catch. Icons don’t go around just because they feel like it. Icons are icons because we need them. That is, something in us is longing, and they provide an answer. Does God exist or does he not? We may agree or disagree on the answer, but we’ll agree that the need for God exists in human beings. Unlike animals, we have the consciousness to see the immensity of time and space, and the ability to see our lives as speckles in an ocean of life and change. Because of that, we long for certainty, sense, reassurance, direction. Whether God is there or not, our need for sense is the human foundation for religions – the base that gives Him iconic power.
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Every icon takes its strength in a human foundation. A particular human striving that forms one aspect of our quest for meaning that the icon mirrors. Mandela is Mandela because we long for Justice. Coke speaks to us because of our perpetual hope to find, harness, a sense of happiness. That the term “the pursuit of happiness” was first coined as part of the American constitution is certainly not foreign to the fact that Coke is American. Icons are the product of cultures and their mythologies. Apple roots its strength in our desire for selfactualization. Our human need to grow as people, be ourselves, define who we are. Remember Apple’s iconic “1984” ad? Using the themes from Orwell’s novel, it features a young woman, emerging from a crowd of seemingly brain dead people who listen to a “big brother” on a huge television. She runs towards the screen and shatters it in pieces, breaking the spell and opening back the door to individuality. Without that human reality, what Apple proposes would be meaningless. Within that context, it provides sense. For Levi’s, the human striving that powers the brand is independence – our constant desire to break free from constraints and the dependence we have on others. Levi’s grew as a brand for teens, because it is the age where we learn independence. The freedom that the brand associates itself with, the ANCHORING THE ESSENCE OF BRAND ICONS
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empowerment to be yourself (or at least appear as such – this is clothing!) that it is called to celebrate, the roughness of the clothes that free the user to live – all of these only make sense in the context of our search for independence. Brand icons, as all others icons, are before anything the product of our humanity. They speak to people that is probably why their richness lies in their complexity!
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