2009 May « Curious Affairs Of Atherton Bartelby

20 May 2009 • 09:53 11

What’s In A Brand?

This past weekend, I became engaged in a conversation with several friends on Twitter regarding Nabisco’s apparent redesign of the Oreo and Ritz brands’ packaging. I was not too surprised at my nearly irrationally vehement reaction against the redesign, for both aesthetic (i.e., “ZOMG the redesigns are sooooo flat and soulless and hideously awful!”) and purely practical (i.e., “Why was this necessary?! WHY?! Were they broken?!”) reasons. My reaction reminded me rather a lot of my reactions to the Peter Arnell-orchestrated rebrandings of Pepsi and Tropicana in late 2008 and early 2009 (although I will concede that those two reactions were far more vehement than mine to Nabisco’s recent foible). The discussion got me thinking not only about the reasons why and when a particular brand chooses to even entertain the (always costly and usually risky) venture of rebranding, but also about our relationships to brands (and even the very concept of brands) in general, as a society and as individuals.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this weekend also saw the resurgence of a particularly thought-provoking blog meme started last year by advertising industry blogger Jane Sample, who published a humorous and engaging graphic representation of all of the major brands with which she came into contact throughout the course of one day. The piece was published one year ago to this day, and I remember reading it last May (and reading the ensuing comments and plethora of other advertising and media industry bloggers’ versions of their own Brand Timeline Portraits) and placing it as a line item on that List Of Fun Personal Projects That Atherton Bartelby Somehow Never Seems To Get Accomplished. This weekend, however, thanks to a revival of Sample’s original post by the Rocketboom blog, and an additional mega-boost from a reblogged mention by Linkage King Jason Kottke, the “Brand Timeline Portrait” meme has been, as Alan Wolk noted today, entirely reanimated.

So I brushed off my epic “To Do” list and recorded my own Brand Timeline Portrait today.

Brand Timeline Portrait Of Atherton Bartelby

I’m really glad that I took the time to do it, and to reflect on how it looks, on what it says about me, and also on what it means about brands in general. Because not only does it tell me a lot about the differences in my life now versus if I had completed it when I first saw it last year, but it presents me and others who see it with a timeline of my experiences, a visual narrative of not only my daily life, but of me as a person. In some ways, the brands represent me more individually than do the color of my hair or my green eyes; in others, they evoke a striking sense of community, i.e., they’re not only my brands, but those of my agency’s colleagues who share my work space, of the other New Yorkers who take the same forms of branded transportation as do I, or even, for that matter, of those who live in the same branded city as do I. Brands are, or can become, as much of an integral part of our individual and collective consciousness as our experiences, or of our very memories. So I don’t suppose a vehement consumer reaction to a seemingly unnecessary rebranding, that has at first glance been executed with little or no thought given to the previous brand experience that has been shared by so many different individuals, is really so very surprising.

Obviously, much thought goes into any rebranding initiative or redesign. I in no way mean to imply that all rebranding campaigns are executed with no thought whatsoever paid to the brand and to how its consumer base will receive its new identity, beyond the initial studies of profits or the eye-roll-inducing evangelizations of the “Personal Branding Experts” on Twitter. But I do think that, more often than not, rebranding initiatives get a bit too caught up in themselves, a bit too blinded to the products’, well, connections to a vast group of other human beings, a bit too ignorant of the hearts, souls, and experiences that consumers have invested in the brands themselves.

Because brands are not just products, or logo artwork, or packaging, or pixels and vectors and typography arranged nicely (or not so nicely) in space and time. Brands represent shared experiences. And brands (and rebranding) shouldn’t always only be considered from a profit standpoint, or from the standpoint of failed artists who are now ad men and attempting to impose their own aesthetics on products that are not only parts of their own experience, but parts of the collective experience of the rest of the society that consumes them, as well. Because brands are not just about profit (or shouldn’t be); they’re about hearts, souls, and memories, as well.

It turns out there’s an awful lot in a brand. And it would behoove a lot of people, particularly those who are directing and manipulating them, to keep this in mind.

Filed under: Blogging, Design, Editorials, Personal , advertising, Brand Timeline Portrait, branding, history, identity, Jane Sample, linkage, memes are beneath me, memories, Nabisco, Oreo, packaging, Pepsi, Peter Arnell, representation, Ritz, Tropicana, twitter

1 May 2009 • 09:33 3

My Favorite Day Of The Year

Churchill Downs - Louisville Kentucky

Derby Day.

The mere thought of the day conjures poignant road markers from memory. The scent of my mother’s rosewater; and that of the peculiar mixture of mint, bourbon, and tobacco on my father’s breath, as he knelt to properly tie my bow tie; and that of the Kentucky grass, and earth, on every first Saturday of May that my childhood memories still retain. Flashes of scarlet: my mother’s Chanel hat, reserved for wear only once a year, at Churchill Downs; the single, perfect rose affixed to my father’s jacket; and, of course, the fabled shawl of roses draped over the winning horse. Laughter. Excitement. Words.

“Nothing else exists but that shawl of roses.”

Indeed, it does not.

My inner circle of friends and those more regular readers of Curious Affairs will already know that horse racing is the only “sport” that truly inspires any sort of meaningful “sports writing” from me. Except it’s not even really “sports writing” so much as it is an excuse to wander through happy memories of my childhood, when my family’s annual triptych of trips to watch the Triple Crown races each year smacked of nothing but excitement. Even later, as an adult, when the Triple Crown races began marking prominent events or statuses in my life that were not always happy, I still welcomed the beginning of the races with gladness. For it is usually on Derby Day, that day on which any horse, really, can win, and on which no one is yet rabidly rooting for the next Triple Crown Winner, when I most adore wandering through memory, and winning, and…hope.

Because for me the tradition of the Triple Crown was not ever about how much money one could make from their picks (although my father seemed to have an almost preternatural talent for picking precisely those colts that would win, including the last three Triple Crown Winners). It was about the pride that one had in their picks, or in the horses they had raised, and trained, and sent to the races. It was about the validation that one would feel when their horse did, in fact, win the race. And it was about hope, not only that ones horse would win the Derby, but that this horse would go on to win the next two races, thereby gracing the world of horse racing with its next Triple Crown Winner.

Over the years, for better but also sometimes for worse, these values have crept into other areas of my life, as well, until Derby Day has become a day of celebrating those three tenets of horse racing, and of life. And although sometimes, as for this 135th Derby Day, I may not be in the most fabulous of places in my life, this day still always inspires me to take pride, no matter how unfabulous things may seem at the time, in my life, and to endlessly hope for the acquisition of my own figurative shawl of roses, and, perhaps most importantly of all, to never lose sight of winning.

And so that is why, tomorrow, on this first Saturday of May, as I scream hysterically rooting for jockey Gabriel Saez to ride trainer Larry Jones‘ colt Friesan Fire to victory in The 135th Running Of The Kentucky Derby, I shall be smiling.

For the memories of Derby Days past.

And for the hope of those to come.