CHAPTER 16
Loosen Up Your Brand
The Grateful Dead carried the love of improvisation they put into their music into many aspects of their business as well—including their branding. Album covers, backstage passes, newsletters, and posters were adorned with rich graphics dripping with color, detail, and imagery.
As with their concerts, you never knew what you were going to get when you bought an album, happened upon an ad for a concert, or received a newsletter. While the band reused certain images consistently—roses, skeletons, skulls, dancing bears, and the “Steal Your Face” logo—how these images were used varied wildly. The font and color of the band’s name changed from album cover to concert poster to newsletter. Sometimes you would get a very cool album cover unlike anything you’d seen before . . . and other times you’d get something that left you thinking huh? and shrugging your shoulders.
The cover art for their 1978 album, Shakedown Street, for example, shows a cartoon scene of playful mayhem complete with people boogying in the street. Drawn by Gilbert Shelton, a well-known artist of the San Francisco underground comix scene, the cover is one of motion, a sly wink, and a joke: It’s readily apparent that Shelton and the Grateful Dead had fun with this cover—one that their fans would savor in the months and years ahead. (“Shakedown Street” is also the name given to the rows of parking lot vendors you’d find at Grateful Dead shows.)
But then again, the band could produce relatively tame and understated cover art, as was the case with The Grateful Dead Sampler album. Also released in 1978, the LP cover features a simple pink skull on a black background.
THE GRATEFUL DEAD CARRIED THEIR LOVE OF IMPROVISATION INTO THEIR BRANDING.
The Grateful Dead’s branding, which was constantly changing and evolving, was in direct contrast to what other bands did. When bands like the Stones went on tour, they usually had a theme, which coincided with the album they were currently promoting. Branding was tightly controlled and carried through to all elements of their marketing: posters, T-shirts, stage sets, and so forth. To promote his 1987 Never Let Me Die album, David Bowie embarked on his Glass Spider Tour—complete with a stage set that included a huge inflatable spider web and spider.
The Grateful Dead, on the other hand, never really adhered to a promotional theme when touring. Poster art sometimes changed from show to show—even for concerts held just days apart. A poster advertising the December 12, 1970, concert at the Santa Rosa, California, fairgrounds was done in black and white and featured band members in cowboy hats, while the December 22, 1970, poster for the show at the Sacramento, California Memorial Auditorium visually stimulated you with a yellow sunset, an orange volcano, and a blue ocean—all surrounded by a lavender border.
From a design perspective, the Grateful Dead incorporated a carefree nature in their graphics that you didn’t see with other more carefully managed bands. The Grateful Dead’s improvisational branding also showed that they knew their audience well—one that embraced nonconformity and free-form thinking in its art and music.
MARKETING LESSON FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD
Loosen Up Your Brand
Too often companies hold tight to their branding. Marketing communications departments dictate how a company is to use a logo and corporate colors—with one person in a department billing him or herself as the “logo police”—and woe to anyone in the company who steps out of line. When David worked at NewsEdge Corporation, for example, a business unit displayed the company logo against a map of the world on their datasheet—a complete violation of “corporate branding guidelines.” The offending product managers were taken to task, told to remove the “nonofficial” image, and to reprint their datasheets.
Of course companies need branding guidelines—we’re not advocating that you do away with how and where your corporate logo is used. Holding tight to branding, however, stifles creativity. Instead of congratulating a product marketing team for taking the initiative in creating something new, the branding police clamp down—and effectively shut off new ideas.
THE GRATEFUL DEAD TEACHES US TO SHOW OUR BRAND’S PERSONALITY AND TO TRUST THAT OUR CUSTOMERS WILL RECOGNIZE OUR BRAND EVEN IF IT LOOKS A LITTLE “DIFFERENT.”
When designing your web sites, e-books, white papers, and social media profiles, give your design professionals some leeway. Yes, you want them to follow your corporate design standards, but let them deviate from those standards as appropriate. Professional designers know how to exercise their skill and incorporate fresh ideas without deviating completely from your brand.
By loosening up your brand, you allow your company to show its personality—and, by extension, its ability to roll with the punches.
GOOGLE LIGHTENS UP ITS IMAGE WITH DOODLES
One company that’s passionate about protecting its logo is Google. While the company allows people to use screen shots of search results pages in their blog posts, e-books, and printed books, people cannot use the Google logo in movies or TV shows without express permission. And, use of the logo on merchandise and clothing, or third-party marketing materials such as tradeshows, is expressly forbidden.
Yet Google also has a rich tradition of modifying its logos for special events. Called “Google’s Doodles,” these whimsically designed logos celebrate everything from Van Gogh’s birthday to the 50th anniversary of Lego. The doodles, stylized versions of the colorful Google logo used on the Web search page, frequently celebrate holidays. Halloween is a favorite. Sporting events like the Olympics and World Cup Soccer generate multiple doodles as the events play out.
When Google developed its first doodle in 1998 (a stick figure behind the second “o” in Google to commemorate the Burning Man Festival), the company had no idea how popular the doodles would become: They are now collectible items and people blog or tweet whenever a new one appears.
Rather than rein in its designers and keep them from “misusing the logo,” Google has made Google’s Doodles part of its brand: “While the doodle is primarily a fun way for [Google] to recognize events and notable people, it also illustrates the creative and innovative personality of [our] company,” the company says on its corporate site. Google now employs a full-time design team that creates doodles for the global Google site as well as the various country sites (i.e.,
Google.fr,
Google.cn, etc.).
Like most companies (including the Grateful Dead), Google protects its image and branding and requests that you not use their logo without asking for permission. But unlike most organizations, the company shows its personality through design the same way that the Grateful Dead does. The playfulness and confidence that’s part of its corporate DNA shines through—even to the extent that you might not even recognize the logo, as was the case when Google honored Jackson Pollock’s birthday. On January 28, 2009, the Google logo looked like something a two-year-old might create: a drawing full of colorful streaks and scribbles.
And, in a wonderful coincidence, Google’s first chef, Charlie Ayers, was the Grateful Dead’s former chef!
ROCK ON
Set your designers free
ACTION: Give your designers leeway to play with your branding elements and invite customers and followers to share their ideas.
You can maintain strict control over your brand in-house, but you quickly lose control once your brand is online. Let people use your theme song in videos and add your logo to blog posts. Instead of fighting back, post the more creative videos and other content to your web site. Or why not crowdsource the next design that you need by announcing a contest for young designers to take a crack at, say, your tradeshow booth graphics. No matter what you do with outside people, you should certainly let your in-house and chief outside designers come up with new ideas that loosen up your brand . . . while still maintaining your corporate image.
