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  The Future of the Past

  “Happiness is not something you experience; it’s something you remember,”24 Oscar Levant was once quoted as saying. All these brands and companies I’ve talked about know that for most of us, the past is always better than the present; quite simply, it is how our brains are hardwired. When you think about it, it’s one of the nicer tricks our brains play on us, as it protects us from painful memories and instills in us an optimism that things will be good again. But the danger, of course, is that it also makes us unwitting suckers for anything—from bruised apples to sock monkeys to classic motorcycles—that reminds us of being young. And scarier still, sometimes all it takes is a subtle, subconscious cue like a few bars of a song or some old-fashioned lettering or a picture of a dead movie star to unleash that sly seductress, nostalgia, in us.

  As America’s roughly seventy-eight million baby boomers reach their sixties, there is no doubt in my mind that nostalgia will most likely play an even more integral role in marketing than it does today. At a time when technology is advancing at an ever-increasing pace, legendary brands and institutions from Woolworth’s to Tower Records are toppling left and right, and nothing feels durable or lasting, we as consumers are clinging even more protectively to those brands that not only have endured from our childhoods but reawaken us and allow us to relive the memories from that simpler, more stable time.

  Speaking of which, remember the woman I spoke about earlier in this chapter, who swears that the Mars bars from France taste better than the same Mars bars manufactured in the United States?

  I believe her. Bear with me for a moment and you’ll see why.

  For the past few decades, I would say, nine out of ten new French parents have given their babies Evian water. For French parents, it’s become a minor superstition of sorts: unless they give little François or Odile a bottle or cup of Evian, the child won’t turn out to be a successful adult. Many young French families keep two separate bottles of water at home: Evian for their babies and another brand of bottled water for themselves. In the introduction to this book, I spoke about the influence parents have over their children’s choice of brands and how, whether it’s the ketchup or mustard in the fridge or the scent of shaving cream or perfume our parents used, we carry throughout our adult lives a fondness for those products we grew up with.

  As it turns out, it’s not just our personal past that can affect our brand preferences for years to come. We also have an abnormal attachment to past tastes and flavors of our history and culture. A few years back, Danone, one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies and the manufacturer of Evian water, decided that since it was so successful in France, why not try to penetrate China, which, with its more than one billion potential Evian drinkers, was a potentially lucrative market?

  Normally, Danone taps its Evian water in the French Alps before shipping it to retailers and customers across the globe. But given that water is quite heavy, the costs of shipping all the way to China proved to be so financially challenging that Danone made a fateful executive decision. The company executives summoned French water-quality experts to inspect hundreds of local Chinese wells in an attempt to find one that met the quality of the French Evian water. Millions of dollars in expenses later, they uncovered the perfect well (or so they thought) and began pumping and manufacturing the Chinese variant of Evian water.

  It was a flop, an across-the-board disaster. When you think about it, it’s not hard to see why French consumers would turn their noses up at the stuff. After all, for many Westerners, China connotes pollution and industrial waste, not exactly qualities we’d want in our drinking water, especially if we were used to getting it from the verdant, picturesque, natural wonder in our backyard. But as it turned out, Chinese consumers wouldn’t touch it either. What was going on?

  As everyone knows, the taste of water is frustratingly difficult to put into words. Water tastes like everything; it tastes like nothing. It tastes like air; it tastes like glass; it tastes like a cold night. So an Evian research group tasked with figuring out why the Chinese hated the water so much decided not to bother asking them what they thought of the taste of the water; instead they asked them questions about their childhoods. Among them were “Where did you play when you were young?” “What was the first drink you recall drinking as a child?” and “Which drink did your parents forbid you to drink—but you drank anyway?”

  The results explained everything.

  Just two decades earlier, metropolitan cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou had been farmland, complete with crops, cows, and farming traditions. Roughly 60 percent of the Chinese labor force worked in agriculture; by 1990 this number had fallen to 30 percent. In the mid-1990s, it dropped further once the Chinese Industrial Revolution reorganized certain cities into economic redevelopment zones and the government bulldozed farmland in preparation for building factories.

  Remember that most of the time we as consumers are seeking to activate and re-create taste memories from long ago, though we’re not always conscious of it. This was what was going on with Evian water in China. Chinese consumers weren’t used to the bustling, urban China of today. Most of them had grown up in agrarian surroundings that were more like the French Alps than modern-day Shenzhen—and had grown accustomed, like the French, to the faintest, subtlest taste of green vegetation in their drinking water, even the bottled stuff. Farmland can turn into factories, but memories are forever green, so when Evian rolled out the new China-sourced water, Chinese consumers felt deprived of the taste of their childhoods.

  Which is where Evian’s experts had gone wrong. They thought they were marketing to the China of today, not the China of yesteryear. Based on the answers to the survey questions, Evian had no choice but to hunt down wells in China that, after filtration, still boasted a faint, grassy, moldy note. This wise shift in strategy not only altered how Danone and Evian decided to operate their future international businesses but today has made Danone the third-largest player in the Chinese water market.

  Which is a long way of saying that I’ll bet my American friend is right about those French Mars bars. To her, at least, they do taste better than the American ones.

  Oh—this same friend recently joined Facebook. She’s refriended several of her old classmates from her old French lycée (talk about reliving old times), and they all agree with her about the Mars bars. The probable cause: French cows, French milk, French grass growing on French soil. And maybe—okay, just maybe—nostalgia.

  CHAPTER 7

  According to nationwide polls, a faraway royal family’s popularity ratings were tanking. The public was questioning, as they tended to do every few years, whether the royal family was really worth it. All that tax money spent maintaining palaces, paying guards, keeping up regal appearances, and for what? What exactly do the royals do to earn their keep? The royal family was facing a PR crisis, and their advisers were desperate. Which is when my telephone rang.

  Would I be available to help strengthen the royal family’s image? To advise it on how it might restore its high national ratings? In other words, could I help reinvent and reinvigorate the royal family’s brand?

  After a few conversations, I found myself in the employ of one of the more recognized families in the entire world.

  There’s something about royalty that ignites most people’s imaginations and aspirations. After all, who wouldn’t want to be a member of royalty and live a life of swank balls, elegant clothing, sumptuous food, shimmering diamonds, and attentive waitstaff? Royalty plays a part in every fairy tale and fantasy most children (and plenty of adults, too) ever read or see in the movies. As Marta Tantos Aranda, a design manager at LEGO’s concept lab in Barcelona, Spain, notes, according to the company’s studies, young girls are hardwired to grow up wanting to be princesses. “They even want to sleep with their princess costumes,” she told me. Even the richest and most powerful people on earth, from billionaire CEOs to Hollywood megastars, turn into flust
ered, tongue-tied children when they come in contact with royalty, and even the richest, most successful CEOs in the world, including Bill Gates, pony up enormous sums to dine with the UK’s royal family. It’s because in our culture, royalty is the highest class there is: it’s the ultimate celebrity, the pinnacle of fame, status, and envy.

  What most people don’t know, however, is that this image doesn’t come easy. That behind the scenes, a royal family is actually a high-end brand like any other, one that is carefully, deliberately, and consistently cultivated and maintained. So much so that royal families across Europe actually meet on a regular basis to compare notes and exchange experiences and craft long-term strategies. As someone in the know once said to me, “The difference between a royal family and a brand is that a brand is focused on the next six months, while a royal family typically has a marketing plan for the next seventy-five years.” Among other things, keeping up a royal image involves maintaining the delicate balance between fantasy and reality, distance and familiarity. It’s important for the royals to stay relevant, but when they become too real, or overly familiar, they lose their magic.

  In 2003, for example, when a reporter for the UK’s Daily Mirror, working undercover as a palace footman at Buckingham Palace, snapped a photo of a Tupperware container adorning the royal breakfast table, the public was horrified.1 They didn’t want members of royalty using Tupperware! They wanted them to be eating from gilded bowls, using spoons of antique silver! But at the same time, if royals behave too loftily or high-handedly, they risk that the public, who generally foots their bill, may perceive them as haughty, remote, and out of touch.

  In the industry, we call this the “pixie-dust phenomenon,” and it springs from the idea that every time celebrities (and what they stand for) interact with the public, they either gain or lose some of their magic—their “pixie dust.” When they become too familiar or reachable, the pixie dust dissipates. I’ve spent my fair share of time around celebrities, and it’s true that the more time you spend with them, the more “normal” they become. Their mystery, magic, and authority vanish—a “brand withdrawal” occurs. Maintaining just the right amount of pixie dust is a fine balance that celebrity “brands” have to juggle every day—which is why when celebrities meet with their “real fans,” managers and publicists typically limit these encounters to a half-hour maximum. And not many people know this, but the reason many royals wear those long gloves isn’t just for elegance; it’s to create an intentional psychological distance from members of the public.

  From a historical standpoint, royal families really are the world’s first-ever celebrities. Since practically the beginning of civilization, they’ve been the public face of their countries. They symbolize a nation’s values and traditions. By commemorating anniversaries, birthdays, deaths, and even the passage of a new year, they unite a country’s citizenry. They’re living, breathing tourist bureaus, and as a result they bring in enormous amounts of capital, business, and industry. In short, they’re brands, and lucrative ones, too. In the case of the British royal family, “the link between the British Crown and Corporate Brand management is not as obtuse as might first appear,” says one study, which points out that many of the royal family’s members refer to the monarchy as “The Firm” . . . and goes on to quote a prominent British historian as saying, “In the age of democracy, the crown has to be like any other brand. It has to win the respect of the people.”2

  The present-day English House of Windsor can even be said to have invented the concept of “merchandising” royalty. In order to control the Queen’s image and ensure she appeared exactly as we recognize her from stamps, coins, currency, and posters, the British royal family rolled out an “image-control system.” Then, as now, whenever the public interacts with the Queen at dinners or receptions, the royal photographer is the only person permitted to take her photograph. Well, naturally, everyone and her mother wants to have their photo taken with the Queen, so the royal photographer will sell these photos to you, for a hefty price (online, you can also buy your picture of yourself standing beside the Queen).

  But back to my royal family and its brand, which two years ago was in trouble and needed a shot of pixie dust. I started off with a campaign that appealed to that country’s (sorry, I can’t say which one) sense of national responsibility, reminding the public that every great monarchy needs to trust and believe in its royal family. Study after study shows that if a citizenry believes in something, the national death rate goes down and people generally are happier, live longer, and use fewer social services—all information I took pains to make very public. I also felt we had to remind the country’s citizens that the royal family was the pinnacle of citizenship, responsibility, and public service; royal dinners and champagne brunches would no longer do the trick. Accordingly, we arranged for members of the family to carry out a new set of duties for assorted handpicked, high-profile charities.

  Next I hired an archivist to plumb the history books to uncover forgotten rituals we could resurrect. My research over the years has shown that consumers forge greater emotional attachments (and are therefore more loyal to) brands that have rituals surrounding them—and that creating a sense of mystery around a brand or product is another highly effective branding strategy. Lucky for me, royal families have many centuries-old rituals, stories, mythologies, symbols, and ceremonies unknown to the general public. Many of these rituals are, in fact, designed to protect the royal family from embarrassing moments—and in general to “control” the public (like the unspoken rule that commoners should never address members of the royal family unless the royal addresses them first and that commoners must use the right titles, both of which serve as reminders that commoners are subordinate to the glittering, highborn royals standing before them). The royal family I work for actually offers training sessions for its younger members in which, among other things, they’re taught the proper way to shake hands with “commoners.”

  In my time working for the royal family, I’ve learned about many secret rituals and traditions that I’m not permitted to divulge, but I can tell you this much: every single royal family in the world knows that the best—and quickest—way to boost its popularity ratings is to host a royal wedding. (Think of the publicity storm surrounding Prince William’s wedding to Kate Middleton and you’ll know what I mean.) A close second? The arrival of a royal baby. Make that lots and lots of royal babies. You want a royal home run? Have twins! This was a feat the Danish royal family managed to carry off in 2011 for the first time in modern history—boosting its countrywide popularity ratings by several percentage points. Remember, the more little princes and princesses that pop forth, the greater likelihood of future weddings and future births and thus continued popularity (now you know what I mean when I say that royal families have a marketing plan that extends for decades).

  At this point you might be thinking, Okay, well, this is interesting, but what does it have to do with us? After all, the United States doesn’t even have a royal family. Well, while that’s true technically, we do have our own variation on royalty. There are Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Will Smith, Justin Timberlake, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, Barack and Michelle Obama, and so many more the head reels. In our culture, celebrities are the kings and queens. And you’d better believe that our marketers and advertisers are just as shrewd at using their fame to brandwash us as the royal family’s advisers are at selling their royal brand to their constituencies.

  Cinderella Really Did Eat Our Daughters

  At this point you might be wondering, Can a famous face really have that much of an impact on how we spend our money? Surely we’re not that naive, are we?

  The answer is yes, we are. What’s more, the lure of celebrity begins earlier in life than you’d think. By the time most young boys reach the ripe old age of three or four, they’ve already begun to worship superheroes like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, X-
Men, or whoever the marketers at Marvel or Pixar have decided the popular new hero du jour should be. By the time they’re seven or eight, many have transferred this giddy adoration onto flesh-and-blood heroes—usually athletes like David Beckham, Dale Earnhardt, Derek Jeter, and Peyton Manning. Companies, of course, know this, which is why there are so many celebrity spokespeople for products marketed to young boys. “When LEGO signed an endorsement deal with Ferrari when [racecar driver] Michael Schumacher was still driving, the license became huge in Germany,” recalls Mads Nipper, executive vice president of market and products for LEGO. “And LEGO was able to ride that wave.” In short, LEGO may have been a strong brand, but celebrity was even stronger.

  Why superheroes and sports stars? Remember in chapter 2, when I talked about how fear-based marketing plays on our insecurities about becoming some feared future self? Well, marketing strategies centered on celebrity do the exact opposite: they appeal to fantasies about our idealized future selves. Thanks to the psychological studies they conduct and the consultants they hire (I know because I’m one of them), marketers are keenly aware that the vast majority of young boys dream of growing up to become strong and powerful. And, in turn, they will be drawn to heroes with special powers—supernatural, athletic, or otherwise. Case in point: I know one American man whose mother gave him a jet-black Batman suit, plus accessories, when he was five years old. He’s well into middle age now, but he still remembers how powerful he felt, with his chintzy little bat boomerang cinched to his waist. He wasn’t just dressed as Batman, he recalled forty-five years later—he was Batman.