05 | Shaping a Brand's Context

I don’t know if you can recall the first time you walked down a street before it had taken up residence in your memory. I find it hard to remember the first time I ran down the Amstel river, where I now live. How I thought it connected into the city, versus how it actually connects now that I know what lies beyond:

De Pijp, where we had brunch on a trip once, is actually just over that bridge. And then a few blocks in the other direction is Reguliersgracht, where we snapped a photo years ago, and where —more recently — I slammed the bow of my 15-foot steel boat into the forgiving fiberglass of a motorized sailboat (we were both at fault, according to the insurance company).

Running Amsterdam changed all that: anonymous streets formed into familiar webs of pavement, then neighborhoods. Neighborhoods connected, north became North and west became West and we all got a little less lost. Out of confusion came semi-confident familiarity, thanks to context.

And here we arrive at our semi-clumsy transition to branding, where a sense of cohesion seems to be the hardest thing to nail, especially as a brand’s narrative gets broader, tilting at new demographics, or unveiling new products.

We had a hard time with Hollywood at first at the Red Bull magazine. We worked to bring in actors for the cover that had the right mentality for the brand strategy (Pharrell, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and then put them in a context that made sense to them and us (BMX riding, mountain biking). When Red Bull expanded into gaming, we puzzled over how it sat side-by-side with motocross and surfing. Guided by the guru-like high performance director Andy Walshe we eventually realized their fast-twitch metrics and quick decision-making ability made for an interesting high performance angle.

Dr. Martens was officially born in the postwar workshop of a German solider who wanted softer support, but it captured hearts and minds and wallets thanks to the punk scene that emerged — booted — in London, and Washington D.C., and Detroit in the 1970s and 80s. So it makes sense that they would include a music strategy as part of the brand narrative mix, even if in execution it’s a bit scattered and the digital content not very compelling. Maybe those pop-up shows bring a different community into their (and partner) stores. Maybe they hope that a Grammy winner will get on stage as SZA did recently and shout out a brand (Red Bull) that a decade ago organized a small tour on which she met Lizzo.

Establishing that context relies on the alchemy of mission, product, and a willingness to hang on through the sketchy content executions and weird collaborations. Context is a long game, and sometimes it allows new product to emerge because it’s so fully formed, as in one of the examples below. So, let’s get to it, actually.