God Bless America But Please Hurry!

A brand is not a sunny day

A perfect fall day exists whether we're here to enjoy it or not. But a brand is a purely human concoction--by us, for us--invisible unless someone is there to see it. Where in the universe is it written that there have to be brands?

What WD-40 Stands For

A moment of silence for John S. Barry, the "main force" behind WD-40 according to today's NYTimes obituary.

It's a classic story of how imaginative and determined marketing transformed a small, seemingly specialized product (developed by a staff of 3) into a global icon. Long before interactive branding was fashionable, Barry engaged customers with the brand by inviting them to come up with new uses for the stuff. (My favorite: a bus driver in Asia used WD-40 to remove a python that had coiled itself around the undercarriage of his bus.) Refused to patent it to avoid disclosing the ingredients. Changed the company name from "Rocket Chemical Company" to match its marquee product.

As Barry admitted, giants like 3M and DuPont made products much like WD-40. "What they don't have," he said, "is the name."

What does the name stands for? Literally, "Water displacement formulation successful in 40th attempt." But from a branding perspective, so much more.

Who cares about branding?

To counterweight the post below we have to ask: how trivial is this? Under the threat of world financial collapse, why pay any attention to the print on an orange juice carton?

Three reasons why we might care:

1. Brands are celebrities of a sort in our culture, and watching their ups and downs can have amusement value
2. Brands demonstrate human behavior (What do people care about? What do they believe in? What motivates them to act?)
3. Brands can drive business activity: surely more Tropicana will be sold this week...