Primal Branding

Bloggers winning the MidEast news war

Remember when NBC, CBS and ABC sneered at CNN’s lame attempt to put together a news network? And then Desert Storm happened along and CNN’s on-the-ground coverage gave America its first 24/7 live footage of war in action as Peter Arnett (and others) crouched next to an open window on the war, scooping the big networks. More importantly, the CNN footage became source material for the news networks.

Who really won Desert Storm? CNN.

There was a foreshadowing of the same thing happening this week in the blogosphere.

Politics Central, a new initiative started by Pajamas Media, reveals that the rites of war are changing again. Politics Central has bloggers right on the ground (including one 17-year-old Bunker Blogger) delivering war coverage by the nanosecond.

The Bunker Blogger (his real name is Eugene) was interviewed in Haifa and--in a twist strangely reminiscent of CNN’s rise to glory--was later interviewed by the Washington Post, CNN and NBC.

Politics Central also landed a 14-minute interview with Israeli US Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, compared to the three to four-minute sound bite offered by most news organizations.

Meanwhile, a living chronology of the ongoing Israel-Hezbollah War has been created and is now available on the Pajamas Media front page.

The ability of Politics Central to deliver solid news that gets suddenly scooped up by established media might seem small to some. But they forget that news delivers what's new. What was new in 1991 was a video camera that showed rocket attacks and SCUD missiles. What's new in 2006 is the fact that dozens of bloggers in the war zone can tell it like it is.

Who knows what the consequences are when the news (especially war coverage) is no longer mediated by Network editors or Defense Departments, but comes straight from the people. The implications are huge. In fact, suggested future blogs may feature Israeli and Arab bloggers citing their dissimilar views.

With apologies to the combatants, the real winners coming out of the MidEast conflict might be the bloggers.

World Cup Soccer as Primal Brand

Soccer blog

The World Cup is happening right now, which is a primal brand that recurs every (two years). The creation story goes way back, probably to people kicking severed heads around a field (OK, no one knows for sure) or more realistically, to some Roman games. The creed, of course, is to win. The winning country knows the thrill of victory, which suddenly brings even also-ran countries like Ghana, Turkey and Spain briefly into the international limelight. The icons of World Cup soccer are the trophy, the field, the uniforms, the enthused and sometimes rabid fans, the special soccer ball. Fan fight songs are also iconic. (I happened to be in Paddington Station one Sunday as Bristol fans arrived in London, transported in guarded train cars. The inside of the station shook as the fans marched, bellowing their ritual fight song.) The rituals included have all the fanfare of the U.S.’s own Super Bowl Sunday (although World Cup is a global rite attended by 5 billion people around the world via satellite, webphone or in person). The games themselves are rites. The parades, fans girding themselves to be present in the stands, at pubs and on the street. Drinking is a rite with sometimes deadly side effects. How big of a fan are you? Well, that depends on how well you know the words. The sacred words attending soccer are not unlike the lexicon of other sports: you have to know the names of the teams, the players, the famous plays, the stats as well as the rules of the game. How well you know the words, fixes your place in the hierarchy of soccer fans. Nonbelievers, of course, are the opposing teams. And people (Americans) who watch football, but not foosball (the rest of the world). The leaders are the coaches, the star players, the television and radio announcers who keep billions of people tuned into a game that ironically the United States hardly understands, yet the rest of humanity craves and adores.

[Primal Branding is a construct that lets you design a belief system using the seven pieces of primal code: creation story, creed, icons, rituals, sacred words, nonbelievers, and leader. Used together these seven pieces of code create a system of belief that attracts brand communities and public appeal for products and services, personalities, political and social movements, even civic communities.]

USMC reaffirms core values

Following the wave of allegations of cruelty by U.S. forces in Iraq, Marine Corps General Mike Hagee reminded his troops recently that “We must regulate force and violence, we only damage property that must be damaged, and we protect the non-combatants we find on the battlefield.”

This reaffirmation of the USMC creed (or in Hagee’s words, core values) is an important part of the primal code that makes the USMC the fighting force it is today.

The creed, of course, is an instrument part of primal code and says what you’re about. A lesson that Martha Stewart, Enron and George W. Bush, have painfully dfiscovered.

[Primal Branding is a construct that lets you design a belief system using the seven pieces of primal code: creation story, creed, icons, rituals, sacred words, nonbelievers, and leader. Used together these seven pieces of code create a system of belief that attracts brand communities and public appeal for products and services, personalities, political and social movements, even civic communities.]

Memory rituals on the rise

There is an increase today in canning vegetables, making jams, pickles.

There is also the phenomenon of young men who are knitting and crocheting.

Archiving and scrap booking have become a billion dollar industry.

What’s all this?

The rise of traditional rituals are what friends at Iconoculture call Memory Marketing™.

They might also be called memory mining. But don’t get out your quilting patterns just yet. While internet, computer games, the automobile and other technological forces force us to become hi-tech, there is a parallel drift toward simplicity (see Hegel's dialectic). 

(Ironically, Google’s home page is a perfect example of simplicity.)

There is so much of everything today—over 400 kinds of cars, hundreds of consumable liquids, even dozens of kinds of toothpaste—and so many people, this post-tekkie dive back to our cultural roots is quite possibly a reaction to the multicultural, multinational, global splurge we have been on the past few years.

So, back to Grandmother’s house we go.

Also, there is a parallel drift toward flesh and bone community. Rituals that pull us together as human beings are incredibly important and powerful.

The growth of informal Starbucks coffee-klatsch communities, Barnes & Noble comfy chair reading communities, stitch and bitch sewing clubs, reading and writing groups, are all ritualized events to find quality and meaning in a world that has become highly technological, de-personal, and sanitized for your protection.

Now, if only I can find Grandma’s old pickle recipe.

Abercrombie & Fitch, the primal purveyor

The new Abercrombie & Fitch flagship on Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in New York City is one more example of the incredible brandsmanship practiced by this company.

The four story 36,000-square foot is the perfect blend of Abercrombie & Fitch past and A+F future. On one wall, canoes are stacked. There is a gun case stocked with broken double-barrel shotguns (presumably English), percussion rifles and other hunting sticks. And, of course, a stuffed moose.

All of this speaks to Abercrombie’s origin as a purveyor of expedition equipment.

Today A+F is a bit different. Kelly Clarkson screams lyrics between a bass beat more suited to clubbing at 2AM than shopping at 2PM. No worries. We are accustomed to stores that want to scream attitude. Staff pose as much as stand throughout the store, draped in A+F wear (employees are given a discount). On this day, staff outfits include flipflops, despite 30-degree outside temperatures.

Jean pairs line cases in subtly different blue hues. T-shirts that suggest heavy dating and parallel activities rest on tables. Mannequins stand sentinel inside curved glass cases of the kind usually reserved for ornithology.

A mural, heavily inspired by painters Reginald Marsh and Paul Cadmus, ascends floor to ceiling (from basement menswear to third floor women’s wear). The iconic A+F models, so boldly sexual, are poised for…whatever, in various nooks and crannies.

While so many other brands prefer to leave their past behind, the A+F flagship store is a wonderfully expressed melding of Abercrombie’s past, present and future. There is no doubt what the brand is about. Sales staff are living icons at the brand focal point, leading their peers toward a destiny filled with sun, sand, and $120 blue jeans.

The company expects over $40 million in annual sales from the flag carrier, and this prime location doesn’t lead one to suggest otherwise. Although they might think about a suggestion box (in roughed-up leather). When one upscale mother/daughter couple was asked what they thought as they walked out, the mother simply looked stunned. The daughter beamed, “Too dark and too loud!”  she screamed. “But I love the brand!”

The original Mr. Abercrombie and Mr. Fitch probably never envisioned their stores carrying products for perky girls and boys instead of fly fishing tackle and elephant guns. But we can’t help imagine that knowing this would make them smile. And perhaps requisition a pair of flipflops.

[Primal Branding is a construct that lets you engineer a belief system that attracts communities of people who want to believe. Primal brands contain the seven pieces of primal code: a creation story, creed, icons, ritual, sacred words, nonbelievers, and leader. “Brand” is an imperfect word,  and can be considered any product, service, personality, organization, social cause, political ideology, religion, movement, or other entity searching for popular appeal.]