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Unless you live on a sweet potato farm in Lancaster, Pa., brands are a big part of your life.
You wake up in your combed-cotton Ralph Lauren sheets to your iPod playing though your Bose sound system. You brush your teeth with Colgate Total Clean Mint Paste before stepping into a hot shower and scrubbing your scalp with Burts Bees shampoo bar. After drying off with Jonathan Adler, you brew a trusty cup of Starbucks Breakfast Blend (or maybe you prefer Stumptown, Gorilla, Lavazza or 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 the way they look, taste, feel. You trust them to be what you need them to be. But what if something changed? What if, for some reason, you couldnt find your favorite brand? In February, Tropicana famously learned that a picture is worth a lot more than a thousand words. The classic American juice company changed its package and, among other things, removed the image of the orange with the candy-striped straw that had illustrated the never from concentrate product since Anthony Rossi pioneered the flash pasteurization process in 1954, making it possible for freshly squeezed juice to stay just that for three months (the packaging itself, the wax paper cartons commissioned by the American Can Company, also boosted shelf life). Then one day it wasnt so easy to find: The new package looked so generic, says one customer. I assumed there was something wrong with the company. So I bought the Minute Maid instead. The original design is not great design, concedes Paula Scher, a partner at design firm Pentagram. Its just familiar. But consumers werent satisfied with simply switching brands. Some were outraged (surprising, perhaps, given that the actual product hadnt changed), bombarding the company with emails and forming Facebook groups. It soon became clear that this was more than a failed attempt at the new look, same great taste switcharoo. Tropicana quickly realized that the people buying their product were buying more than just a carton of juice: They were buying something familiar, even nostalgic. Its kitsch, says Scher. But consumers like it because they know it: Its your familiar old buddy.

Walk the line

Brands with cult followings deal with the paradox of the passionate
By Courtney Humiston

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John Gerzema, chief insights officer at Young & Rubicam Group and coauthor of The Brand Bubble, says Tropicana underestimated the value of its brand, which includes such intangible assets as logo, associations, sounds (the Intel ding), trademarks, reputation, even smells. Paul Woolmington, founding partner at Naked Communications, has gone so far as to suggest bottling the clean, metallic smell of an Apple store: Its the smell of intuitive technology, he says. These intangible assets, according to Gerzemas research, have become increasingly important to consumers over the past few decades. Using the patented model he calls the Brand Asset Valuator, Gerzema and his colChange your leagues determined brand too that brand values rose in their contribution much and to shareholder value next thing from 5 to 30 percent over the past 30 years. you know, We have moved from people will a tangible to an intanbe drinking gible economy, says Gerzema. Consumers juice from based on concentrate. discriminateimagery. emotional In Tropicanas case, Gerzema argues that the value lies in peoples associations with the packaging: It reminds them of childhood 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 habit of burning toast and throwing shoes at you, and you would like to forget both childhood and breakfast), it was at least comforting to know that you could find the juice you like (No Pulp, Some Pulp,
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Lots of Pulp, Calcium + Vitamin D, or Light n Healthy) and get the hell out of the cooler section before you froze to death. Zain Raj, CEO of Euro RSCG Discovery (and decidedly a No-Pulp devotee), was pretty thrown when the new cartons appeared on the shelves. I wasnt sure if I was buying the right one and I ended up getting the one with

some pulp. Changing the packaging ruined my ritual. I couldnt start my day the way I usually do. Which is, he believes, where Tropicana went wrong: Most people probably arent too passionate about their juice, but they know what they like. Tropicana made it more difficult to buy their product. A brand that makes things

becoming a cult brand How

Its a foolproof marketing technique turning customers into slavish, unthinking, devoted followers of products. In other words, zombies. Its a strategy that can create legions of pod people dedicated to a particular brand, leaving all rivals in the dust. The best customer a brand could have is an actual cult follower. The people who join cults are most likely to be like you, writes 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 desperate. While some do conform to this image, the majority do not. Demographically, they tend to be from stable and financially com-

David Koresh and Camaro

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 testosterone-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 compound 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.

harder has no place in my life. Scher agrees. What the design company did was faux modernism, so it looked like a generic product . . . . The cleanness took away the character, and, of course, the familiarity. Scher argues that the container could have been tweaked so 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 certain behaviors), explains the phenomenon, which may include the efforts to improve the packaging for everything from soft drinks to cable networks, thusly: Marketers get tired of a brand decades before con-

Rajneesh Chandra Mohan Jain and Rolls Royce

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 his first 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 dealers. 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 Bhagwans Rolls-Royce-a-day diet. We thought this was a splendid idea, an executive told the Associated Press. They were not so happy, however, with the Bhagwans taste in customized paint jobs; many of the motorcars were covered in psychedelia.

to obtain a really devoted following

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 shouldnt be deterred. Its hard to think of a better product placement than the Beatles and the Manson family. Of course, there have been other partnerships. Richard Linnett

Marshall Applewhite and Nike

Applewhite founded Heavens Gate, a UFO-worshipping sect in San Diego that believed the world would end with the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet. On March 26, 1997, 39 members of the cult, on orders from Applewhite, committed mass suicide by swallowing phenobarbital washed down with vodka. All of them died wearing brand new, identical, black and white Nike apparel shirt, sweats and sneaks apparently in preparation to just do it in the afterlife.

Jim Jones and Kool-Aid

Be careful that a larger brand doesnt 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 Dont 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 with cyanide 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 commands a sizeable share of stomach, as marketers like to say. But nobody says Dont drink the Flavor Aid, do they?

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Step Right Up
It doesnt take a genius account planner to know that trace amounts of cocaine recently found in Red Bulls new cola product will not bring down that brand. On the contrary, this special ingredient is already elevating Red Bulls status as an edgy product and energizing its die-hard fan base. How does Red Bull do it? How does it stay on top? Simple: Its not just a drink, its a way of life. In other words, Red Bull is a cult brand, which any marketing egghead will tell you is a product that has a special charisma, commands unprecedented customer loyalty and needs little to zero advertising 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 was invented in 1945 by Dudley LeBlanc, aka Coozan Dudley, a peripatetic Cajun salesman, the Billy Mays of his generation, 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

The rise and fall of Hadacol

Big surprise. Red Bull really does give you wings, exactly as advertised.
a name to the new elixir by mashing up the initials of his company The Happy Day Company and adding the letter L, for LeBlanc. Hadacol was a B-vitamin drink (mixed with nicotinic acid) 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; it was billed as a tonic for virtually any health issue. Hadacol ads claimed the pungent syrup relieved nervousness, irritability, indigestion, chronic fatigue, dyspepsia, loss of appetite, loss of strength, inability to sleep, loss of weight, malnutrition, skin disorders, eye disorders, gassiness and constipation, writes Floyd Martin Clay in Coozan Dudley LeBlanc: From Huey Long to Hadacol, a biography of the Hadacol King. Testimonials from devoted customers (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 tellingly not 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 didnt actually cure anything, at least not to the satisfaction of serious health professionals. Cynics claimed its popularity derived from its own special ingredient: alcohol. Coozan Dudley insisted alcohol was only used as a preservative. The elixir 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

sumers do. They are sitting in their offices surrounded by the brand, thinking and dreaming about the brand, 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 medias power to generate momentum so quickly) Tropicana followed in the footsteps of another
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infamous failure, New Coke, and went back to the original. Juice may, after all, just be something to go with your bagel or your Champagne, and your devotion to the brand isnt likely to go any further like, say, getting it tattooed on your back. While researching his book, Buying In, Rob Walker, writer of the weekly Consumerist column for The New York Times, talked to a young man who had literally branded

himself with a PBR logo tattoo, giving the explanation: Its part of my subculture. According to Walker, PBRs revival as the beer of choice for a certain segment of Americas 20-somethings began in a skater bar in Portland. The cheap local beer went belly-up and the bar replaced it with PBR. What happened next was a Shepard Faireyworthy experiment in real-life consumer glory. The

created a cultural movement around the product by staging elaborate events called Hadacol Caravans that traveled the country. According to Clays book, the caravans consisted of seventy Hadacol trucks, twenty-five automobiles, two airconditioned buses for the performers, one photo-lab truck, three sound trucks, two beauty queen floats, three airplanes and 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, Dorothy Lamour, Hank Williams and Coozan Dudley himself, who was fast becoming a celebrity in his own right. The caravans hawked Hadacol comic books, T-shirts, lipstick and water pistols. The company distributed Captain Hadacol cards to kids, redeemable for the drink. Coozan Dudley hired comedians to write quips about Hadacols alleged aphrodisiac properties and its alcoholic potency. He commissioned a hit song, Hadacol Boogie, that went like 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 million-dollar medicine man. According to Time magazine, Hadacol sales grossed $24 million in 1950. At the height of the brands success, the Federal Trade Commission stepped in 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 wasnt 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 it down 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 up the companys 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, the company 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 advertising 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 associated with the product didnt help. Although Hadacol lingered on store shelves into the 60s, without a constant barrage of media support and the familiar Dudley face, the fad began to 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 speculator and Hadacol vanished into final obscurity. As Coozan Dudley was fond of saying: If you dont tell em, you cant sell em. Richard Linnett

blue and white cans had inhabited the coolers of working-class men for decades but hadnt been aggressively marketed in nearly as long. Pabst Brewing Company had, in fact, stopped brewing its own beer altogether in 2001 (contracting production to Miller) and, says Walker, the label had resigned itself to certain doom: They were essentially waiting for the people who drink it to not be around to drink it anymore.

Lacking any fresh association, it was easy for young members of this subculture (the very kind that Clint Eastwoods Pabst-swilling Walt in Gran Torino would probably scowl at) to make it their own. It became the underdog of beers, says Walker, who interviewed some of the early second-wave consumers. They liked that they were drinking something that society had rejected. Woolmington agrees,

calling it anti-fashion fashion. PBR became a part of their anticonsumerist identity: an accessory like, say, Crumpler bags, white V-neck T-shirts, fixed-gear bicycles and skinny jeans. By assigning meaning to the brand based on their own values, it became something personal, what they wanted to communicate about themselves to the world. Brands are essentially cultural information, says Walker,
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referring specifically to the kid with the tattoo: The PBR logo, to some people, has meaning as a symbol that relates to identity. Consider the identity of someone wearing an image of Che Guevara emblazoned on a belly-T. Michael Casey, in his book Ches 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.
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When interviewed by Casey and his team, she evaded questions about the Cuban revolution, but was able to talk about the image on her T-shirt with zeal. She didnt know that much about Che as a person, but the T-shirt meant a great deal, says Casey. Since the famous photograph 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 has minimized his achievements and his sacrifices. Casey disagrees: What makes an icon powerful, he says, is how the image is received. People invest their own feelings and project their ideals onto it.... It becomes a very personal thing my hopes, my wishes, my dreams and its a good thing. We have to accept that symbols change meaning; to become defensive about its past is to deny the power of the present. In that sense, to some people, the PBR logo means beer about as much as Ches image means Viva la Revolucin. Barack Obama also has been criticized for being less of a savvy politician 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 elements of a brand, including a good logo with a close connection to consumerism. Its no coincidence that the Obama logo so closely resembles Americas favorite soda cans. Scher says that when Coca-Cola redesigned its logo to look more modern, it started a mini design revolution. Pepsi, of course, followed suit, and by the time Obama came around, people were prepped for clean contemporary design. Anything elaborate or decorative [like McCains image, perhaps?] became outdated. Casey isnt troubled by the duality of the person and politician, Obama and Brand Obama. You cant have one without the other, he says. It has to be sexy in some way, because these things matter to us and they always have. The alternative is Big Brother. Which begs the question: Who created Brand Obama? His campaign or his consumers? The answer, as

with any true cult brand, is both. Fiskars has been making scissors since 1649. Is it any surprise that they have developed a devoted following over the years, given how many scrapbooks and quilts there are to be made? Fiskars successfully tapped into the passionate crafting community in 2006 when they started the Fiskateers, a community for crafters sponsored by the brand but controlled primarily by the consumers. The truth is, says Casey, what most 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 and next thing you know, people will be drinking juice from concentrate. Woolmington identifies two problems brands 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 to ask themselves, Do I want to belong to a club that everyone is a member of? Woolmington emphasizes the need to redouble efforts among cult followers, or nurture the zealot, as he puts it. He uses Nike as an example of both a cult and a mass brand. Nike feeds the sneaker pimps, he says, but you can also walk into just about any shoe store and get a pair. The second obstacle: You have to be careful when you become the man, he says. Lose your edge, your uniqueness and someone else will replace you. PC, for example, is The Man to Steve Jobs Mac. Virgin (music, airline, finance) became successful as an extension of founder Richard Bransons personality: charismatic and provocative, in contrast to other old fuddy-duddy brands in the industry. (In the beginning it was just about the business, Branson

has been quoted as saying now its about the brand). PBRs success, says Walker, was 50 percent phenomenon and 50 percent marketing strategy: They did smart things with their lucky break. Sensitive to its consumers delicate sensibilities, the company began quietly (no giant banners or girls in PBR-emblazoned bikinis) sponsoring skateboarding competitions, bike-messenger gatherings and the like in cities across the country. It wasnt 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 scissors that 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 brand with meaning and personality. Not too many successful brands start by allowing the consumers to decide what they mean, says Raj. Most have to establish a clear identity. Heres what we can do for you. The less a brand tries to mean something to a certain target demographic, the more open it is to meaning whatever users want it to mean 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 soon becomes an integral part of their daily lives. Throw a product in front of people, let them decide what it means 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 their product is for and whos supposed to buy it. Red Bull does just the opposite. Everything about the com-

pany and its sole product is intentionally vague, even evasive. While the drink appears to be targeted specifically at someone extreme athletes, ravers, students the brand identity is actually pretty nebulous. You could argue that what Red Bull drinkers have in common is a taste for the edgy and faintly dangerous. But what does this really mean? Obviously, any attempt to articulate such a thing would immediately destroy it. The great thing about a murky brand is that you can let your customers fill in all the blanks. Is there something strange and vaguely creepy about the important roles Pabst was brands play in our essentially lives? That we depend on them, that we need waiting them, that we use them for the to identify ourselves, people to communicate with the world, to meet peowho drink ple? That we give our its beer brands meaning and to not be personality? That we form relationships with around to our brands? (People drink it talk to their coffee, anymore. says Raj, especially if its Starbucks.) That we turn people into brands? Casey is optimistic. There is nothing demeaning about people projecting their ideals onto something, he says. Symbols have always been a way of reducing complex ideas into something simple. Christians have been wearing the cross for centuries. Yes, it represents a certain ideology, but ask most people who wear it around their neck what it means to them and chances are you will get a very different, and very personal, response. Dont even get them started on why they picked the beer they drink.
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