Who’s wearing the pants around here?
At least three times in the last few months we’ve read of major brand owners, mostly in the field of fashion and sportswear, getting uppity about who wears their brand and what it is says about them.
Firstly there was Abercrombie & Fitch, apparently offering to pay Michael Sorrentino, star of the MTV show Jersey Shore, to stop wearing their branded clothing, as they feared it was damaging their brand.
More recently, we had Lacoste begging that Danish mass murderer Anders Breivik ‘be banned from wearing its garments because it fears the company’s reputation is being damaged”. (The Independent, 9 September, 2011). I bet it is.
And Speedo is fighting an Australian blogger who is using the name Speedo in his various blog domain names because he is showing ‘images of persons wearing swimwear briefs and related offensive images’. (Sydney Morning Herald, September 22, 2011).
Do brand owners have the right to say who can and who cannot wear their brand, particularly if the users are famous or, in the case of Breivik, infamous?
One’s first reaction is sympathy. For Lacoste, this is clearly a ‘nightmare’, according to Paris daily paper, Liberation, and quoted in the same Independent article. Who would want that maniac parading one’s product for all the world to see? It’s all the more bewildering, but not brand relevant, that apparently Breivik has refused to wear prison clothing, an altogether different kind of ‘branded’ clothing statement.
The Speedo case? It’s an association they probably could do without.
The Abercrombie & Fitch case is different. Michael Sorrentino has
done nothing wrong. He’s just, what? A former exotic dancer? The wrong kind of customer?
But hold on a minute.
For years, fashion brands have been encouraging us to pay for their logo branded product and then…walk around as an unpaid advertisement. Well that’s the way I see it.
It started with a relatively discreet logo on Fred Perry’s sportswear. Then the likes of Tommy Hilfigger and Ralph Lauren took it to new levels with ever bigger logos. You now have to hunt far and wide (as I sometimes do) to find a polo shirt that doesn’t have an emblem on it.
The thinking is branding 101. It’s saying a brand is not just a statement of quality and style. It says something about the wearer. And no more so than if the brand logo is prominently displayed by the wearer. And it has been a huge success.
And it’s often not subtle. Abercrombie & Fitch makes a feature of huge logos and company names up the side of its track pants, as worn by Sorrentino on the Jersey Shore. There’s currently a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt with an outsized logo 3-4 times the characteristic Polo player emblem.
In accessories, we have Louis Vuitton’s signature handbags. Burberry has its distinctive pattern and for years Gucci used a signature green and red stripe on their shoes. All these brands were all the more recognisable for it and people have been happy to pay handsomely to be seen wearing them.
There’s an irony here. The same companies that are happy for us to pay to wear their brands are even happier for us to pay yet more not to be seen to do so. You can buy Ralph Lauren’s Purple label with not a logo in sight and only you will know how much you have paid for it.
It’s not always been thus.
We have a visual that we use in presentations, or used to use. Maybe we should dig it out.
The visual is from the late 1980s, from an early Tommy Hilfiger advert. In it, there are a number of young Americans on a porch and the central figure is wearing a Hilfigger branded shirt. We make the point that, however common a site that might be today, only 30 years ago, one could only deduce one of two things from that image. The young man with the Tommy Hilfigger shirt either worked for Tommy Hilfigger or he was Tommy Hilfigger.
We use it to emphasise how entrenched brands have become in the public consciousness. And how they have become not just products but in some ways, an expression of one’s identity. In short, it’s the business case for branded clothing.
But can brand owners encourage us to wear their brand but also say who does and who doesn’t?
I’d say not.
Fashion brands have established the precedent of highly branded merchandise. And they should be very happy about that. They get us to pay handsomely for their merchandise and then we go around giving them free advertising.
Until someone ‘undesirable’ wears the brand and they want to restrict who wears it (Lacoste) or even (Abercrombie & Fitch) pay someone not to wear it?
Clearly you can make your product so expensive that the Anders Breiviks and the Sorrentinos of this world cannot afford to wear your brand. But that would defeat the point. These are mass market brands.
They can’t have it both ways.
You can’t make the case for everyone being unpaid ambassadors for your brand and then change the rules when someone unpleasant or who doesn’t fit your customer profile decides to buy your brand.
And let’s face it, I’d not be writing this article if the polo shirt that Breivik was wearing had no logo on it.
But once again… hold on…another minute.
In the Abercrombie & Fitch case, there is a curious twist.
Was it, after all, a publicity stunt?
The Financial Times (20 August 2011) quoted Stuart Wood of design consultancy Fitch: “it is a clever move to garner publicity. Abercrombie & Fitch is all about sex and aspiration…Jersey Shore is all about those things”. Further, “there is no disconnect between their brand and the US programme. They are trying to leverage their image and make sure they are top of mind”.
The FT also noted “analysts at Nomura suggested it was no coincidence the move came ahead of significant expansion for A&F… This will definitely drum up some excitement for the brand, which doesn’t hurt as they are about to open 40 stores overseas”.
Oh dear. If it’s true, it’s hypocrisy heaped upon duplicity. Hilarious.
The fact is, we will never know. And if we did, would be any the wiser?
It tells us how complex the marketing of brands has become. Time was, we looked at an advert or brand communication and had a pretty good idea of what the company was doing and whom they were targeting. You could choose to pay attention or not.
Now, if you are interested, you have to delve into the perhaps cynical subterfuge of the brand owners, their advertising advisers and their media strategists.
It’s mildly interesting but frankly I don’t have the time or interest to work out what Abercrombie & Fitch is doing and whether I approve or not.
It reminds me, of all things, of a novel by Margaret Atwood, called Oryx and Crake, a novel set in the future, when civilisation has collapsed (we are not told how or why). The main character, Snowman, was, before the collapse, Jimmy, who grew up in a world dominated by large multinational corporations. Jimmy studies at the Martha Graham Academy, where art has become a servant of commercialism. He becomes a copywriter. But in his world, what he does is not called advertising any more. It’s called ‘problematics’. It took me a while to get it. Communications, she is saying, is so multi-layered that working out how to get your message across is… unfathomably complex. And, increasingly, more like the job of an actuary than a communications strategist? I joke.
It’s exhausting even thinking about it. Working out whether to be direct (sell the benefits) or indirect (get people’s attention like Abercrombie & Fitch may have done), yes that would be problematic.
I am glad I don’t have to do it.
It used to be said that it’s not companies that own brands, it’s consumers, in whose minds they have meaning.
Maybe the companies who create and manage brands are re-thinking that idea.
By Sandy Belford is a director of the brand consultancy Principals.
First published on AFR (www.afr.com) - 3rd October 2011
