About

This page is a work in progress, but let’s start with the inspiration.

In the 1960s Andy Warhol painted the Campbell’s Soup Can. Whether he meant to do it or not, Warhol pegged the shifting role of consumption and brands. The Campbell’s brand as represented by its iconic cans showcased industrialized food that had loaded into its DNA “mom” and “hearth/home.” In the 1960s, an icon could be a brand and three TV spots could reach 85% of the US viewing population.

In the 1970s-80s we saw the evolutions of brands to make more aspirational statements of beliefs. A 1980s Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale ad talks about “strength” “pride” and “tradition.” It spells out how their Clydesdales represent a “dedication to quality” you can taste. This was common to the time and a practice meant to build the bridge between brand icons and the higher meaning they hoped to hold.

By the 1990s you see brands representing emotional benefits and laddering all the way up to human values. Sprite’s “Obey Your Thirst” among others tapped into the highest esteem and aspirations of its consumers. And by 2000s the Clydesdale no longer represented the taste of Budweiser, but its emotional core, as you can see in this silent, respectful expression of national grief when they take a knee to the empty NY skyline.

Missing from the brand story and largely from the brand in 2008 is the acknowledgment of the consumer’s role in the brand, not as an object to move or manipulate emotionally, but as an active participant in the brand. For the past 60 years the consumer’s perspective wasn’t necessary beyond the focus group because it wasn’t recorded in brand influence. There simply wasn’t an instrument sensitive enough to hear the consumer more broadly nor for those consumer comments to hold sustained value until the Internet came along. And the long tail made their voices more influential as their advocacy or complaints landed within the top results from searches.

In 2002 Scott Bedbury released his brand treatise, New Brand World. The brand guru and former SVP Marketing for Starbucks prophetically wrote:

“A brand is the sum of the good, the bad, the ugly, the off-strategy. It is defined by your best product as well as your worst product. It is defined by award-winning advertising as by the god-awful ads that somehow slipped through the cracks, got approved, and not surprisingly, sank into oblivion. It is defined by the accomplishments of your best employee—the shining star in the company who can do no wrong—as well as by the mishaps of the worst hire you ever made.”

In a user-in-command world the voice of the individual is raised and the thunderous declarations of the most mighty made more accessible and popular by joining the masses in shared ownership and participation in the brand.

What’s all this got to do with Warhol? With his focus on an icon and the meaning it brought to the art gallery and table he appropriated the icon for his subject and elevated it to popular art and culture. In a small way, this blog intends to do the same. It intends to be an art form, expressing the passion and work of Howard Schultz as he re-enters the Starbucks brand story in a significant way. It intends to incite debate around art, semiotics, branding and maybe even coffee.

Can a brand be just about its iconography any longer? No. If brand work begins and ends with a strategic brief or corporate identity, it’s not doing real branding. It is the sum of its expressions and reactions–be they expressions of commission or omission.

Then, what role does the CEO play? Howard–and any CEO–is a personification of the living, breathing brand. The values that they infuse in their goals, actions and communications are transparent and need to be. They will not be contained in their original context, so they should be informed by the core strategy and beliefs of a brand to ensure honest translation in any context.

from Wikipedia:

“Several stories mention that Warhol’s choice of soup cans reflected his own avid devotion to Campbell’s soup as a consumer. “

This is my canvas for Howard’s acts. This is the future of branding. Onward.