The Dangers of a Person Representing Your Brand
The embodiment of a brand into a specific entity has gone hand in hand with marketing since the dawn of time. When your brand is identified with an entity that is fictitious, it can lead to a great deal of loyalty and revenue streams such as Mickey Mouse.
For years, brands that had this single entity “mascot” thrived under the cache that they could build around this icon. As time progressed, these mascots began to become voices in radio, faces in print and eventually people themselves with the advent of television.
Companies would invest ludicrous amounts of money into these actors that quickly became the faces of their brands. Two of the most iconic are The Maytag Man and The Marlboro Man. These actors were paid for decades of their lives to exist as these parts (and in the case of The Marlboro Man, gave his life due to lung cancer). Both had very tight contracts that limited what contracts they could accept outside of their brands and affiliated commercials.
These examples are a bit older, for a more modern context see Dos Equis’ The Most Interesting Man in The World. The company went so far as attempting to remove records of actor Jonathan Goldsmith in order to maintain this marketing campaigns sense of allure and mystic. Even now, if you didn’t know the actor’s name, some of the mystique and cache has been lost for you.
The final example of a company basing its brand in a person is the one that also demonstrates the danger of doing so: Jared and Subway. Years ago, after losing a massive amount of weight with Subway as a staple of his diet, Jared became the new mascot and spokesperson for Subway. His story was a huge contribution to their rebranding as a healthier lunch option as well as “Eat Fresh.”
Recently, due to criminal allegations against him, Subway has cut ties with Jared. They claim that they have just put holds on said ties, but in the age of social media this story broke so quickly and is of such a heinous allegation that it would be a PR nightmare to resume ties.
In the interim, Subway Corporation has ordered that all collateral that bears the resemblance of Jared to be removed, concealed or covered in order to preserve their brand from being tainted by association with their soon-to-be former spokesman. This has led to some rather funny efforts to conceal his likeness such as the one pictured in this blog.
In the end, these allegations, true or not, will cost Subway millions of dollars. Not only will all of their collateral need to be re-designed, printed and disseminated, but their entire brand strategy will need to be re-examined.
By grounding your brand in an idea, a voice or a logo, you are able to change, shape, improve and fix it. If you base said brand in a person, then there is always the danger that their personal lives and issues will overshadow and dampen your business. To quote V for Vendetta, “Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.”
It will be interesting to see how Subway recovers and proceeds into the future. Now if we can just get them to give us more than 1 slice of turkey per sandwich.
