Existential brands

It is striking how certain words rapidly catch on, often as a perversion of their true meaning. I have called this out in the past with ‘curation’ and ‘narrative’. If nothing else this proves the importance of copying in human behavior. The latest word is ‘existential’ as in, “Donald Trump presents an existential threat to the Republican Party” or “the existential Immigrant crisis”. I think the narrators who are curating our language are searching for a word that carries more import than ‘real’ or even the Americanism, ‘real and present’ as in ‘real and present danger’. In this context existential means it exists, so ‘real’ would do just fine but journalists and broadcasters are wanting to pervert the meaning of the word, to imbue it with a more scary, attention-grabbing meaning.

So I will respond to this, as I have previously, by reclaiming the word for marketing.  I put forward the idea that curation is actually a very good word for what we do in marketing, we pick and choose from what is available to create our exhibition or brand. We try to change the narrative and create new more persuasive narratives for our brands (we tell stories). And good marketers should indeed be existentialists. The original existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre believed that existence precedes essence. For those of you who skipped Philosophy classes, what he meant was that the individual was free to define themselves through their actions. They could escape stereo-types and create their own meaning. They saw the world as absurd by which they meant good things could happen to bad people and bad things could happen to good people or, if you like, they believed that ‘shit happens’. The only sensible response is to do your own thing and, by so doing, to be authentic.

My best example of an existential brand is Red Bull, a brand that says very little about itself, it just does stuff it believes in and lets us all join the dots. I recall visiting a very hip rock club in Chicago some years back and talking to the owner about Red Bull. We got on well and he told me what Red Bull paid them  for their support. It was a lot of money but it came with one condition. Red Bull insisted that the brand received no mention in any publicity. At the time my company was paying a lot more money to this club to ensure that we were heavily featured in everything from beer mats to ads for forthcoming bands. Red Bull just wanted to be – not to shout. And they were doing very well with this strategy.

We don’t really know anything about Red Bull based on what they say. It is an energy drink, it gives you wiings. But we know a lot about them and see them everywhere based on what they do. In an absurd world, Red Bull very much does its own thing. We could all have a go at defining the essence of the brand but, as existentialists believe, it is based on Red Bull’s actions as an individual brand that refused to be defined by the abstract market segmentation in drinks. Cool don’t you think?

My two least favourite existential brands are Victoria Beckham and Kate Middleton. Victoria said early on in her career, when she was known as Posh Spice, that she wanted to be more famous than Persil. Well she has nailed that and on a global scale. I’m not sure what Kate’s ambitions were, I suspect like most nice middle class families from the Home Counties, she and her parents just wanted her to marry well and have a nice family. If so, she has nailed that too. William seems like a terrific chap, the kids are adorable and her and William’s generation of Royals seem like a good crowd. As it happens she is even more famous than Victoria Beckham. Victoria doesn’t say much, Kate says nothing – they just are. I did a rigorous analysis of Hello magazine over the last 12 months and they both appear – Kate with more prominence that Victoria – in every single edition and mostly on the front cover. Their existence is rammed down our throats – well to be fair I feel it is rammed down mine, for many I suspect they gobble it up like a wide mouthed chick in the nest taking regurgitated food from their mother’s beak. Their existential meaning is defined to a degree by what they do but rather more by what they wear and where they wear it. They exist, so does Kim Kardashian, but they don’t feel authentic. I find this kind fame for the sake of fame a real and present danger, a slide into decadence from which we as a society may never recover, to be honest. I guess I should just be more philosophical.