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C H A P T E R 2
How Is Cultural Branding Different?
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c o n i c b r a n d s h ave b e e n g u i d e d by a set of tacit strategic principles that I call the cultural branding model. These principles dif- fer entirely from those advanced by conventional branding schemes. In fact, cultural branding upends many verities by which managers have sworn for decades. To learn how cultural branding works requires setting aside conventional thinking and developing a new mind-set. To seed this mind-set, I begin with three short case studies in which I contrast cul- tural branding with the three branding models that dominate business practice today. Since the 1970s, managers have overwhelmingly relied on a cognitive model of branding—what I call mind-share branding. In the 1990s, some experts expanded the mind-share model, which they believed ignored the emotional and relational aspects of branding. These writers pushed for what I call emotional branding. With the recent rise of the Internet, another challenger has become popular as well: viral branding. Together, these three branding models account for virtually every con- sumer branding initiative today undertaken by brand owners, ad agencies, and brand consultancies. When managers seek to build the identity value of their brands, they draw on some combination of these three approaches. Table 2-1 compares the key characteristics of these three models with the cultural branding model. My research indicates that, while these conventional models may work for other types of branding, they do not build iconic brands. In this chap- ter, I develop short genealogies of brands often used as exemplars of con- ventional strategies—Corona (mind share), Coke (emotional), and Snapple (viral)—to demonstrate that implicit cultural branding strategies have built each of these iconic brands.
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TA B L E 2-
Comparison of Axioms Across Four Branding Models
Cultural Mind-Share Emotional Viral Branding Branding Branding Branding
Key Words Cultural icons, DNA, brand Brand personality, Stealth market- iconic brands essence, genetic experiential ing, coolhunt, code, USP branding, brand meme, grass benefits, onion religion, experience roots, infections, model economy seeding, conta- gion, buzz
Brand Performer of, and A set of abstract A relationship A communi- Definition container for, an associations partner cation unit identity myth
Branding Performing Owning Interacting with Spreading Definition myths associations and building viruses via lead relationships customers with customers
Required for Performing a Consistent Deep Broad circulation a Successful myth that expression of interpersonal of the virus Brand addresses associations connection an acute contradiction in society
Most Identity Functional Services, retailers, New fashion, Appropriate categories categories, specialty goods new technology Applications low-involvement categories, complicated products
Company’s Author Steward: Good friend Hidden puppet- Role consistent master: motivate expression of the right con- DNA in all activities sumers to over time advocate for the brand
Source of Buttressing Simplifying Relationship Being cool, Customer identity decisions with the brand fashionable Value
Consumers’ • Personalizing • Ensuring that • Interaction • “Discovering” Role the brand’s myth benefits become with brand brand as their to fit individual salient through own, DIY biography repetition • Building a • Word of
- Ritual action to • Perceiving
personal mouth experience the benefits when
relationship myth when buying and using product using product
Some variation of mind share is today found in virtually every strategy document used for the world’s most prominent brands. The terminology sometimes changes—other popular terms that reference virtually identical ideas include brand essence, DNA, brand identity, genetic code, and brand soul—but the idea has remained remarkably consistent since the 1970s. Brand strategy, in the mind-share model, begins with identifying the brand’s distinctive constellation of these abstract concepts in the con- sumer’s mind. Managers must ensure that this brand essence is consis- tently evoked in every activity that carries the brand mark and remains consistent over time. Experts encourage managers to act as stewards of the brand’s timeless identity.
A Short Genealogy of Corona Beer
The Mexican beer Corona was one of the most successful American iconic brands of the 1990s. Now the leading imported beer in the United States, Corona enjoys sales that have far outpaced the number two import, Heineken.^4 Mind-share advocates prescribe that to build a strong brand, the company must first stake out a distinctive claim for an important category associa- tion, one that competitors haven’t captured, and then consistently deliver on this brand essence over time. Yet Corona executed neither of these steps. Corona’s first brief climb to iconic status came in the mid-1980s and peaked around 1988. At the time, Corona was one of the cheapest beers in Mexico, the price brand of the large Mexican brewery Cerveceria Modelo. U.S. distribution was mostly limited to the Southwest, where Mexican Americans tended to live and where Mexican culture influenced the Anglo population. In the 1980s, the idea of a hedonistic spring-break vacation had caught on spectacularly across U.S. colleges and was widely celebrated in the media. Students from across the country stormed Daytona Beach, Florida; South Padre Island, Texas; and—most popular of all—the beach resorts of Mexico. These vacations were carnivals of excess: 24/7 drinking, wet T-shirt con- tests, dirty dancing, and sexual escapades, real and imagined. At about four dollars per case, the price of Corona was certainly ap- pealing. In addition, Corona had a leg up on other Mexican beers for two reasons. First, it had a distinctive package design, with all the right conno- tations. A clear, returnable bottle with the logo roughly painted straight on
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the glass, this package was understood as an authentic Mexican beer (read: offbeat, noncommercial product of a less industrialized country) com- pared with the foil labels and brightly colored cans used by the more ex- pensive Mexican beers. Second, somewhere along the way, American students started putting lime in their Coronas. This was a beer analogue to another favorite party ritual: licking some salt, drinking a shot of tequila, and sucking on a lime wedge. As college students returned to campus with stories of libidinous fun in the sun, Corona was frequently a prop. Distribution followed the stu- dents as they entered their professional lives in major metropolitan areas, particularly in places like Texas, California, and Arizona, from where a dis- proportionate number of college kids traveled to Mexico for spring break. As Corona-laced myths of sun and debauchery spread, the beer soon be- came the drink of choice among young professionals throughout the na- tion. Corona was the quintessential beer for an evening of partying at bars and clubs. Mind-share advocates would explain that Corona owned the beer cat- egory’s partying associations and attendant user imagery. This explanation, however, does not work. At the same time that Corona became popular, Bud Light was beginning an extraordinary sales climb with its Spuds McKen- zie, “the official party animal,” campaign. Bud Light apparently owned partying, too. Nor were these two brands alone, as other beer brands tried to convey a partying attitude, albeit with less good fortune. Beer drinkers didn’t value partying as a generic concept associated with the brand. Rather, they valued beer brands when the brands told the partying story that best resonated in American culture. In the 1980s, Corona and Bud Light had the most compelling partying myths. Other brands did not. Partying was one of several category benefits available to brewers as a platform on which to build culturally specific myths. Corona’s success came from its authentic role as a key prop in the Mexican spring- break myth. The beer won out because it embodied one of most resonant party-centered myths then circulating in American culture.^5 What happened next is a good example of what often happens when customers act as the primary authors of the brand’s myth. As Corona became popular, the trend-leading consumers who had initially propagated Corona’s myth watched the insider coolness of their Corona drinking evaporate. The Corona story lost its cachet, and so they moved on to other beers.
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tion in the United States. Budweiser had emphasized a relaxation theme as far back as the 1950s, and other beer brands followed Bud’s lead. Since other beers shared Corona’s generic connection with relaxation, what, then, made Corona’s particular expression more resonant than those of- fered by other brands? When Corona’s American consumers slapped down seven dollars for a six-pack of the former bargain-basement beer, they were buying a chance to experience, through the ritual gulp of the yellow liquid, a glimmer of the American ideal of a tranquil beach vacation. The new advertising cam- paign had grabbed hold of Corona’s valuable but dormant cultural real es- tate—the Mexican beach—to develop a different and more meaningful myth. With its roots as a working-class Mexican beer and its spring-break reputation, Corona was still indelibly etched in the collective American imagination as a key prop in a winter beach vacation. This asset, however, lay dormant, underutilized. Mexican beaches had another meaning that Corona’s managers adapted. Sitting on a beach relaxing with a beer or margarita had become one of the most salient American dreams for getting away from it all. This ideal, equating relaxation with escaping to a beach in a less developed country, a place far removed from the highly competitive company life, a place where time slowed down, was tremendously appealing to overworked Ameri- cans. To tap into this cultural opportunity, Corona authored an evocative myth that used the Mexican beach stories to imbue its beer with the idea of escaping from everyday routines. Corona’s new campaign registered so powerfully because the United States had just undergone a profound shift in its labor market. Process en- gineering techniques and outsourcing were applied to once secure white- collar jobs. For the first time in the twentieth century, middle-class salaried jobs were now routinely subject to layoffs and firings. Work became in- tensely competitive, and work-related stresses dominated everyday life. In this environment, relaxation took on a new, historically specific meaning. No longer did relaxation mean simply kicking back at the end of the day to chill out with a cold beer—a common relaxation story told by Budweiser, Schlitz, and Pabst from the 1950s through the 1970s. With job demands fol- lowing workers into their homes, this simple tale no longer made sense. Relaxation required more radical escapes. Professional men and women now dreamed of going someplace far removed from the rat race.
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In thirty seconds of film, Corona used its authority to represent the Mexican beach to encapsulate these desires for a sanctuary from the hectic pace of work life. Corona gave beer drinkers the perfect antidote that they could now gulp down, even while sitting at home on a Wednesday night after a frantic day at the office. To accomplish this feat, Corona branding violated the rules of mind share by shifting its supposed brand essence from wild partying to tranquil relaxation. But consumers didn’t seem miffed. Instead, the story con- nected, and Corona came to embody one of the most potent expressions of relaxation in American culture. The brand didn’t represent relaxation in a generic way, as an abstract concept stripped bare of connotations, reduced to its dictionary definition. Rather, Corona owned a particularly evocative representation of relaxation in American culture: doing absolutely nothing on a faraway Mexican beach.
Why Can’t Mind-Share Branding Build Iconic Brands?
Corona’s iconic value resided in the particulars of its distinctive myths, not in the abstractions that mind-share advocates emphasize. Further, Corona succeeded only when it radically shifted its myth, from a story about party- ing in Mexico to one about relaxing in isolation on a quiet beach. Rather than stewarding the brand to maintain consistency at all costs, as mind- share advocates advise, Corona succeeded when managers attended to his- torical changes and made the appropriate adjustments to better align the brand’s myth with important tensions in American society. Mind-share branding can be an effective approach for utilitarian, low- involvement brands like Dove and Crest, because distilling the product to a handful of key benefits simplifies decision making for the consumer. On the other hand, the reduction of the brand to a handful of abstract con- cepts will never lead to the building of an iconic brand.^6 Why, then, does mind share maintain such a tenacious grip on all branding activities today? Managers hold on to the mind-share model be- cause it allows for easy rationalization of the branding task. If the brand is a timeless, abstract entity, then creating a brand strategy is a painless process. Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. And, if the management task is to express this brand essence in everything the brand does, then managers can make quick decisions, brand bible in hand, on whether proposed branding activities are on-strategy. Metrics that measure the brand’s suc-
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Pushing one step further, some experts today argue that, through the magic of internal branding, the entire organization should emote in uni- son the spirit of the brand. Organizations are to look deeply inward to truly understand their identity and then inculcate the brand spirit so that they can express this spirit in everything they do. Likewise, communica- tions should work to build emotional linkages between brand and cus- tomers. Some consultants even argue that organizations must work to get both employees and customers to treat the brand as a religion. When the brand is communicated with supercharged emotion, a deep bond will form with customers.^8
A Short Genealogy of Coke
Coca-Cola is a favorite example of emotional branding. Managers envy the extraordinary bond that Coke developed with its customers, particularly in the brand’s halcyon days in the United States, from the 1950s through the 1980s. But how did Coke build and sustain these emotional ties? In the United States, Coke was originally launched through mind- share techniques—as a nerve tonic, hangover cure, and stimulant for “brain workers.” But, beginning with its innovative use of advertising and public relations during World War II, Coke was soon transformed into a potent iconic brand. The Coca-Cola Company shipped Coke to the troops on the front lines and celebrated the war effort in a blizzard of print ads. The media re- ported that GIs were writing home from the battlefront, pining for Coke. This idea was picked up in Robert Scott’s wartime best-seller God Is My Co-Pilot, in which he describes how shooting down his first “Jap” was mo- tivated by thoughts of “America, Democracy, and Coca-Colas.”^9 Troops would treat the scarce bottles of Coke with religious zeal, drinking in a rit- ual confirmation of their national pride. As a result, by war’s end, Coke came to represent American myths ex- emplified in the war effort: a country willing to sacrifice its sons and daughters to save the world for democracy, a country with a unique indus- trious spirit able to outpace the Axis powers in building war machinery, and a country with the tenacious ingenuity to out-science the enemy in the race to the atomic age. Downing a Coke, consumers could imbibe in col- lective feelings of national solidarity emanating from America’s ethos as dramatized in World War II.
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There is no question that Coke consumers formed a significant emo- tional bond with the drink during this period—a bond that continued through the 1980s. But the crucial strategic question is this: What spawned these ties? Even a glimpse at Coke’s history in this period reveals that the source of customers’ emotive relationships with the brand had to do with the identity myth that has been plunked into each bottle of Coke through publicity and advertising. The lesson we should learn from Coke’s postwar success is straightforward: Imbue the brand with a compelling identity myth, and potent emotional ties will follow. Throughout the postwar years, Coke rested on these laurels. As Amer- ican nationalism surged around the country’s postwar economic strength and Cold War containment policies, Coke served as the favored vessel for these ideals. Meanwhile, Americans were going to work for large compa- nies and were moving into the new government-subsidized suburbias, and Coke was championing the new suburban-nuclear life in its most euphoric mode. In Coke ads, smiley all-American cola-quaffing girls exuded equal dashes of modesty and sex appeal, filling the drink’s “pause that refreshes” with unquestioned patriotic good cheer about the new American way of life. Americans could experience a moment of national solidarity simply by sharing a spare moment sipping a Coke. By the late 1960s, however, Coke’s apple-pie celebrations of the Amer- ican commonweal were wearing thin. Civil rights protests, a youth culture disenchanted with companies and middle-class life, and a very unpopular war in Vietnam were all tearing the country apart. Coke’s suburban- nuclear myth had become naive, antiquated. Attempts to reconnect with consumers by means of a smorgasbord of tried-and-true Americana im- agery failed.^10 Here we see a common property of iconic brands. Since these brands derive their value from how well their myth responds to tensions in the na- tional culture, when there are tumultuous cultural shifts, the brand’s myth loses steam. I call these shifts cultural disruptions. When disruptions hit, iconic brands must reinvent their myth, or they fade in relevance. Finally, the company and its ad agency hit on a resonant revision of the Coke myth.^11 “Hilltop,” shot on an Italian hillside, began with two fresh- faced and short-haired girls singing, “I’d like to buy the world a home, and furnish it with love... .” As the camera panned, we saw that they were joined by other youth, men and women, whose facial features and dress
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Joe Greene as he leaves the football stadium after a game. Greene, nearing the end of a Hall of Fame career, was one of the most feared athletes ever to play professional football. As his nickname implied, Greene treated foot- ball like war, and he usually won. He was an immense and immensely tal- ented defender, renowned for his ability to overpower offensive linemen and crush opposing quarterbacks. In Coke’s ad, the kid stopped the ferocious player by simply asking, “Mr. Greene?” Hobbling through the tunnel after a tough game, the mas- sive Greene turned to the small boy and answered, “Yeah?” “Do you need any help?” the kid asked. Greene shook him off and continued his retreat to the locker room. Unfazed by the star’s grave veneer, the kid asked, “Do... you... want my Coke?” “No no,” Greene said. “Really, you can have it,” the boy responded. Greene finally relented, took the Coke, and, parched from the game, chugged the entire bottle. The earnest and intimidated boy expected nothing in return and walked away, but Joe shouted to him, “Hey, kid!” When the boy turned, Greene offered up a gift, tossing his game jersey to the boy. “Wow, thanks, Mean Joe,” the kid said. Greene’s face lit up, his big smile revealing the warrior’s humanity and his momentary bond with the boy. The text, “Have a Coke and a smile,” concluded the ad. By the late 1970s, America’s Vietnam wounds were beginning to heal and youth culture was no longer as threatening. But racial strife had con- tinued to increase. Highly segregated African American neighborhoods had formed in Northern industrial cities when sharecroppers migrated in masses to take unskilled production jobs after they lost their agricultural jobs to the cotton gin. In the 1970s, as American industries shed jobs, the African American workers were the first to go. Factories began an exodus from these cities to the suburbs, to the nonunion South, and overseas, leaving behind black urban ghettos that were increasingly jobless, isolated from the rest of society, lacking families, and lacking public investments. It was not surprising, then, that these ghettos became increasingly violent in the 1970s as a new underground economy dominated by gangs and drugs formed.^14 The ghetto became America’s most acute social problem. American mass media was filled with panicky stories of marauding gangs and so- called “welfare mothers.” Suburban white Americans feared the imagined threat emanating from the ghetto. Again, Coke offered a utopian moment of healing built around a “pause that refreshes.” Drinking a Coke now provided a magical salve that
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symbolically healed the racial divide in American society. The confronta- tion in the dark tunnel conjured up the growing nightmare of the ghetto in the collective imagination of the majority white population: the physically intimidating black man who threatened an innocent white child. But we soon learned Greene’s meanness was just an affectation, that he was actu- ally a sweet guy who could show real affection for the small white kid. The ad offered a story of racial healing for a country that couldn’t contain its racial conflict. In this way, Coke again helped the nation momentarily for- get its real problems that were then devastating its cities. In the two decades following this off-the-charts success, The Coca-Cola Company and its many ad agencies have failed to pull off another signifi- cant performance of the Coke myth. They’ve brought in a Hollywood talent agency to make the brand famous through entertainment. They’ve hired the hippest creative boutiques in the business to make ads that would appeal to younger generations. Along the way, Coke has aired many entertaining ads and many less impressive ones, but none of these ads have ignited a passion for Coke among the generations that came of age since the 1980s. In fact, considering Coke’s monstrous equity and media weight, the brand has had some of the least effective advertising in the industry. How could this be? Since Mean Joe Greene, The Coca-Cola Company has become a lead- ing advocate of mind-share and emotional branding. The company’s strat- egy focused on advancing Coke’s abstract associations (refreshment, authenticity, and social bonds) and forging emotional connections with its audience, resulting in the most entertaining and heart-tugging communi- cations its vast resources could buy. In its halcyon days, however, Coke did much more than combine copy points with Spielbergian cinematic tricks. Coke’s product benefits worked as a platform on which the brand built powerful identity myths that spoke to American ideals. In these myths, the irrepressible American spirit always overcame otherwise divisive prob- lems. By sharing a Coke Americans of very different ethnic and class back- grounds could revive their commitment to a common moral charter. Coke called its followers into a world in which the ever optimistic and indefati- gable American spirit overcomes seemingly intractable social problems. As these social challenges changed, Coke’s myth changed accordingly. Perhaps more than any other brand, Coke had earned the authority to promote a utopia in which American citizens come together to solve social problems that threaten the commonweal. Yet, since the 1980s, Coke has
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Rather, the emotional connections we routinely witness between iconic brands and their core customers are the result of potent identity myths spun by the brand. Coke didn’t compel its customers to form an emotional bond by airing generic emotional communications. Many sappy ads in- tended to pull at the audience’s heartstrings come and go with little fan- fare. Rather, Coke developed these emotional ties just like other iconic brands. The right identity myth, well performed, provides the audience with little epiphanies—moments of recognition that put images, sounds, and feelings on barely perceptible desires. Customers who find this kind of identity value in a brand forge intensive emotional connections. Emo- tional attachment is the consequence of a great myth.
From Viral Branding to Cultural Branding
Cultural branding also stands apart from another recent challenger to mind share, so-called viral branding (some authors and managers also call this approach grass roots and buzz).^17 As the name suggests, viral branding focuses on the paths of public influence: how noncompany actors influ- ence customers to value the brand. The viral approach is a compendium of ideas rooted in the classic ideas about public influence—diffusion of inno- vation, word of mouth, and public relations—that responded to two major shifts in the 1990s: the increased cynicism toward mass marketing and the emergence of the Internet. Viral branding assumes that consumers, and not firms, have the most influence in the creation of brands. Cynical consumers will no longer heed the missives of mass marketers, so instead must “discover” brands on their own. The Internet provided a means to accelerate this discovery. As a re- sult, what was once considered an important process that marketers might want to stimulate has now often become an end in itself. In addition, many experts today recommend below-the-radar market- ing, which seeds the brand among the most influential people. The basic idea is that if the firm can convince these people to make the brand their own, and configure the brand, like a virus, to make it easy to talk about, these influencers will rapidly spread their interest in the brand to others through their social networks, just as a virus spreads. At the beginning of the new-economy era, Douglas Rushkoff warned the world about what he termed media viruses. Brand managers quickly turned the tables and de-
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cided that going viral was the quickest and cheapest path to brand heaven. The more velocity through the system, the better the brand does. A related idea is what New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell has called the coolhunt.^18 In this view, brands are no longer led by corporate activi- ties but rather given meaning and value on the streets by opinion-leading trendsetters who adopt the brands and give them cachet. Consumer goods companies send out cultural detectives onto the streets of cool territories, like the playgrounds in poor urban neighborhoods or underground clubs, to scout out new trends. The race is to grab the newest, coolest culture the fastest, before it becomes mass culture. In viral branding, a covert public relations mode becomes the core of the branding effort. The ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) champi- ons its ability to create “talk value” as its core competency, for instance. Many major ad agencies and consultancies have launched specialized groups, such as Young & Rubicam’s Brand Buzz, to deliver viral branding plans to their clients. Streetwise research consultancies like Sputnik make a living hanging out with the right trendsetting fringes and filing reports with multinational companies.^19 In sum, the viral approach presumes that consumers—not marketers— create identity value. Consequently, identity branding has turned into the task of stealthily seeding brands with the right customers so that they will take up the brand and develop its value. The company takes a back seat to consumers in forging what the brand stands for. As we will see with Snapple, while viral processes are (as always) im- portant for the diffusion of branding efforts, viral branding itself is not a viable approach for building an iconic brand. The primary source of Snap- ple’s identity value comes from the company’s marketing activities, not from its consumers. And, like Corona and Coke, Snapple’s efforts created a potent identity myth.
A Short Genealogy of Snapple
Snapple is often used as a poster child for viral branding.^20 In the early 1990s, Snapple developed tremendous buzz among cognoscenti in New York and beyond, eventually spreading across the United States. In fact, Snapple’s climb to iconic stature was due to its owners’ idiosyncratic cul- tural branding strategy. The brand’s viral characteristics—its buzz, its under- ground coolness, and the ragtag community of fans that formed around
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comedic and paranoid voice of slutty anarchy. He thrived on a nihilist atti- tude that involved celebrating whatever polite society considered tasteless, and dissing whatever it considered important. Stern loved to call the bluff on America’s puritanical tendencies by stuffing as much sexual innuendo into his program as possible. But, while diametrically at odds in terms of politics and tastes, the two radio jocks were united in that they were Amer- ica’s most provocative populist voices denouncing the priorities and tastes of American elites. Snapple had ultimate credibility as an amateurish company because its three entrepreneurs knew nothing about professional marketing. Nor did they have any interest in learning. They ran the company according to what made sense and seemed like fun. Snapple’s customers knew as much and loved them for it. When private investors bought majority interest from the entrepre- neurs in hopes of expanding the Snapple magic to Americans across the country, they faced a huge risk: How could they apply professional mar- keting to a brand that attracted legions of devoted followers for Snapple’s amateurism? By hiring a young ad agency copywriter to run the marketing department, the new owners avoided brand management orthodoxy. The copywriter, in turn, hired an upstart New York ad agency, Kirshenbaum & Bond, to create a national branding platform for Snapple. This unorthodox brand team did not attempt to reduce Snapple to a set of brand essence adjectives, seek out deep consumer truths, or plumb Snapple devotees’ emotional connections to the brand. Rather, they searched for ways to further extend Snapple’s odd, amateurish perform- ances. At the time, Snapple’s followers were so touched by the brand that they flooded Snapple’s small office with fan mail. Over two thousand let- ters a week poured in, not to mention original videos, songs, artwork, and poetry, all odes to Snapple. The team found a promising story in Wendy, a woman who did cleri- cal work for Snapple. Wendy had taken it upon herself to respond to mail as best as she could. The brand team cast “Wendy, the Snapple Lady” as the letter reader in dozens of TV ads. The ads opened with Wendy seated be- hind the real-life Snapple receptionist’s desk, throwing out an unselfcon- sciously friendly “Hi from Snapple!” Viewers could clearly see that the chatty and plump Wendy was the real thing, not a Hollywood actor. She would then read a letter from a customer with a fussy question about one
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of Snapple’s products, a question that could only be of concern to a devo- tee. After Wendy answered the question, the ad would cut to a camera crew shooting documentary style in the customers’ homes to capture their reac- tions. None of the spots were scripted, and various bloopers were often left unedited on the film. The tag line “100% Natural” captured the idea that Snapple was not only a natural product, but, even more important, a transparent company run by well-meaning amateurs. The company was run by eccentric people who shared their customers’ enthusiasm for frivolous pleasures, not by M.B.A.’s and their spreadsheets and market research. To complement the advertising, Snapple sponsored many events, but not the usual blockbuster sports, music, and celebrity spectacles of Coke and Pepsi. Instead, Snapple staged events that mocked big corporate pro- motions: Cherry spitting in Minnesota, yo-yo tossing in New York, and the Miss Crustacean contest in New Jersey were among the sanctioned contests. The founders had stumbled on, and the brand team nimbly amplified, an identity myth that responded to a burgeoning contradiction in Ameri- can society. To understand why Snapple connected so profoundly with a significant slice of the American public, we must place Snapple’s amateur- ish brand performances in the context of social tensions that were becom- ing acute in the early 1990s. During the 1980s, most Americans, particularly men, had signed on to Ronald Reagan’s call to arms to get tough again, like the pioneers of the West, to revive the country’s economic and political stature. With gung-ho entrepreneurs, tougher business practices, and painful but necessary reorganizations, Reagan promised that the United States would lead the world again. By the late 1980s, the U.S. economy had been largely reinvented as a much more dynamic and much more cut- throat economy, with the constant threat of downsizing and reengineering disrupting labor markets. Profits began to surge, and the country found a new set of heroes in its swashbuckling entrepreneurs (e.g., Ted Turner, Bill Gates) and athletes (e.g., Michael Jordan), who exhibited the “Just do it” spirit. But, while companies and corporate elites profited handsomely, the constant restructuring pushed many other American workers into service- economy McJobs. As it became clear that trickle-down economics wasn’t trickling down, this dissonance bubbled to the surface in both popular culture and politics. The populist backlash of the early 1990s gained political expression in the massive defection of Republicans and Democrats to the populist candida-
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