The Mind of TCHO

I am thinking more about the theme of connection for our brand. I think it’s definitely a fundamental thing that people crave in their lives right now (or has this always been a fundamental craving?).

I’d like to explore further what companies have successfully created connections between consumers and the origins (people and land) behind their products. I realize our definition of connection is much broader than simply that between origin and consumer—but I am personally very interested in this facet.

From my previous work in the specialty coffee world, Illy Caffe immediately springs to mind. Illy Caffe has had a long partnership with Sebastaio Salgado, who has taken breathtaking photographs of coffee workers around the world.

Their project, Il Principio, is a multiple year photo-journey around the world in coffee lands (a personal subject to Salgado who worked for the International Coffee Organization prior to becoming a world-renowned photographer). Stunning photos from Brazil, Ethiopia, and India (more countries to come in the future). It’s all there--the long journey from the crop to your cup, the dramatic landscapes, the poverty-weathered striking faces, and above all, the dignity of humankind--all in signature Salgado style. While I think our approach to creating a similar connection would have more potential for interaction, I think this project actually succeeds in telling a meaningful story behind coffee and creating a deeper connection and appreciation for its origins.

That’s the title of the book by Douglas B. Holt. “Identity brands” according to Holt, “compete in myth markets, not product markets.” By that he means:

Identity brands ... compete with other cultural products to perform myths that resolve cultural contradictions. Identity brands participate in myth markets, competing and collaborating with films, music, television, sports, and books.

Holt is describing our mediated life:

In cultural branding, communications are the center of customer value. Customers buy the product to experience these stories. The product is simply a conduit through which customers can experience the stories that the brand tells. When customers sip a Coke, Corona, or Snapple, they are drinking more than a beverage. Rather, they are imbibing identity myths anchored in these drinks. An effective cultural strategy creates a storied product, that is, a product that has distinctive branded features (mark, design, etc.) through which customers experience identity myths.

Identity branding relies on identifying a social contradication and then supplying a new myth that answers the need for individual resolution. The Coke ad with the kids on the mountainside wanting to teach the world to sing was an answer to the social division of the 60s—a message of hope and unity.

Iconic brands don’t mimic existing culture, nor do they grab on to emerging trends. They are cultural innovators that beckon to their audiences, using artistic techniques, to change how the viewers think and act. Leading trends is a superficial approach to cultural change. Iconic brands help to change culture at a deeper level, influencing how people understand themselves in relation to the nation’s ideals.

That doesn’t mean that the myth a brand forwards is not a reflection of the company’s real values. On the contrary, the company and its myth are one.

The company exists within the populist world, and the myth is an expression of the company’s ethos (as well as its fellow insiders within the populist world). Brands that rely on organizational populism develop the brand to express—in a distilled and stylized dramatization—the core ethos of the company.

In other words, identity brands have to be authentic - and charismatic.

Brands earn consumers’ respect as authentic when they deliver on two qualities: literacy and fidelity… To win over audiences with their myths, iconic brands’ communications must exude charisma - a distinctive and compelling style that epitomizes the populist world from which they speak… brand myths succeed when the brand performs the right story, which is authentically grounded in the brand’s populist world, and is executed with a charismatic aesthetic.

“We Are the World” is spelled: Yeh Hum Naheen

From the eponymous website:

Yeh Hum Naheen has become a truly unprecedented musical movement. Featuring the vocal talents of some of Pakistans biggest music artists, including Haroon, Ali Haider, Ali Zafar, Shufqat, Strings, Shuja Haider and Hadiqa Kiani, uniting to sing out the message the world needs to hear.

Written by Ali Moeen, Pakistans foremost lyricist, with music composed by Shuja Haider, its the central message of the song that has compelled so many people to become involved. It is a message of reconciliation, a message of peace and a message of truth. Capturing the imagination of people across the board, Yeh Hum Naheen has given a voice to the silent majority, those in the Muslim world who have for too long been mis-represented.

I just stumbled upon this site, which contains a database of chocolate bars from around the world. Click to the WRAPPERS section to view all the wrappers in one place. Lots of them are from Europe; some are from the US. It’s amazing how similar many of them are. These guys stand out for me:

• Chchukululu (at least it’s colorful)


• Maglio (metallic lettering is cool)


• Antica Dolceria Bonajuto (elegant feel; gold accent piece)

In case you were wondering, this is what Starbucks marches to:

Establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow.

The following six guiding principles will help us measure the appropriateness of our decisions:

Provide a great work environment and treat each other with respect and dignity.

Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business.

Apply the highest standards of excellence to the purchasing, roasting and fresh delivery of our coffee.

Develop enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time.

Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.

Recognize that profitability is essential to our future success.

Amazing what you can do when you’re liberated from having to dump your promotion budget into television advertising. Was in LA last Thursday to visit our space design buds Ubersee and had to drop in to the Kwik-E-Mart on Venice Blvd at Supulveda, one of seven 7-11s around the country that have undergone rebranding to Springfield’s favorite convenience store.

Quite the scene, with convertibles full of young, stylish Japanese tourists and lowriders with gang bangers crowding the parking lot.

The place was so popular, you had to wait in line to get in.

Your favorite bank was there.

Once, inside, there were Apu’s cousin and his brother-in-law at the counter.

He’s watching the hordes ricocheting around the store searching for the products which had been rebranded.

Unfortunately, Buzz cola was only available in cans.

And apparently they didn’t make enough Krusty-Os.

But there were lots of spinklicious donuts.

<

And plenty of attitude, even when it may have been highly ironic in the context of their host body, the 7-11.

And yet more attitude!

.

Wish there was more to buy or find, I’d have stuck around longer, but as it was, I had an appointment to go to, so I grabbed a six pack of Buzz cola for Boris and Nik, and motored on to Pasadena.

Apu bid me adieu.

We’ve been talking about this for a while. This is from an email exchange I had with Erik and Susanna:

Until we put together target audience, positioning, and marketing strategy, all we have are pretty designs.

We have one more thing to do with regard to target audience—understand who we are talking about. We both have rooms full of Millennials, and we can listen to them, and they might think they know who they are, but actually we need a deeper understanding.

I am trying to get a historical-social prospective on this. There’s a book we used at Wired called Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069 which I think is crucial. It’s the history of the United States by generation. The Millennials are a precise group, born of the Boomers and Gen Xers, arriving at adulthood now. In reality, they are too young to be the group we are defining as 18 to 35. But because the previous group was so weak (X-ers), the Millennials will be defining the whole cohort, and will pull along those Boomers who are not totally brain dead, or who are seeking heat.

The Millennials are not little Boomers. They aren’t opposed to Boomers. They are different. They grow up looking at their self-absorbed and hypocritical parents, they witness the rubble of the social institutions tumbled by the technological revolution, and their response is not more of their parents’ me-me-me, but us-us-us—let’s fix the problems and re-invent civil society for the 21st century. They are looking back to find out what’s worked, and they are looking forward to build a better future. They are simultaneously more traditionalist and future-forward.

The book How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding is fascinating. The central point it makes is that each era’s iconic brand answers each era’s fundamental social angst. The original DDB Volkswagen campaign responded to the conformity and mass marketing of the 50s. The Coca Cola ad with the kids on the hillside joining hands about how they wanted to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony responded to the social disintegration and atomization of the anti-Vietnam and civil rights protests of the 60s. The Corona campaign that turned a cheap, mediocre beer into the leading imported beer in the US with the commercial of the dot com couple on some deserted beach, the guy lazily skipping stones on the still water, and when the beeper goes off, picking it up and skipping it too talked to the need for people who were working 80 hours a week needing to completely decompress—Change your latitude.

I’m not saying that we are building VW, Coke, or Corona. But this kind of thinking provides us with an analytical framework on which to set a brand direction.

We are focusing on the Millennials because they are not being focused on by the chocolate industry, because they are going to be the next generation of chocolate consumers and we might as well become their brand, and because they are, by definition, modern. What is their mission, and their angst? Their mission is to join together and rebuild the civic space, how we live together as human beings. Their angst is the deep divide we find ourselves in, both in the US and around the world—a divide that is altogether understandable given that it separates eras of policy, politics, culture, religion, development, civilization. And a divide that millennials are yearning, and will ultimately be responsible for closing.

I propose that the overall thematic message, the core of the TCHO brand, is connection. We have already talked about how we are connecting the consumer to the producer by making the supply chain transparent. I want to generalize that: TCHO chocolate connects us to the land, to the producers, to each other. Chocolate as a ritual of sharing. The brand as a message of unity.

So imagery of connection, sharing, embrace: a handshake, an arm around a shoulder, an arm around a waist, a passionate embrace, people working or playing in groups—a football huddle, kids playing with each other, listening to a teacher, soldiers sharing an embrace or standing with a group of kids, brainstorming at the office. The symbols could appear on our “magazine cover” bars, it should appear in our promotional materials, it should be a conscious/subconscious theme in all the media we generate—if we have a video of Timothy visiting a farm in Ecuador, when he steps out the small plane at some remote airfield, the camera should show him greeting his contact, literally focusing on his handshake or embrace.

Unity, connection, sharing, embrace.

Check out ray oldenburg’s concept of the Third Place (he is an urban sociologist who wrote a book called The Great Good Place).

may not be what we want, but it is still interesting to see what some big cafe chains have used for inspiration.

Third Places

Oldenburg identifies third places, or “great good places,” as the public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact. In contrast to first places (home) and second places (work), third places allow people to put aside their concerns and simply enjoy the company and conversation around them. Third places “host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” Oldenburg suggests that beer gardens, main streets, pubs, cafes, coffeehouses, post offices, and other third places are the heart of a community’s social vitality and the foundation of a functioning democracy. They promote social equality by leveling the status of guests, provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and offer psychological support to individuals and communities.

Quotable

“In the absence of informal public life, living becomes more expensive. Where the means and facilities for relaxation and leisure are not publicly shared, they become the objects of private ownership and consumption.”

“What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably--a ‘place on the corner,’ real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile.”

“Most needed are those ‘third places’ which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase ‘third places’ derives from considering our homes to be the ‘first’ places in our lives, and our work places the ‘second.’”

“The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people’s more serious involvement in other spheres. Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends...They are the heart of a community’s social vitality, the grassroots of democracy, but sadly, they constitute a diminishing aspect of the American social landscape.