Brandwashed (26 page)

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.

A
ccording 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 flustered, 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.

A
t 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.

As for girls? In general, young girls are seduced less by powerful figures. Their ideal future selves are graceful, feminine, and stunningly beautiful—hence the princess fantasy that is so pervasive in our culture. In her recent book,
Cinderella Ate My Daughter
, journalist
Peggy Orenstein looks at why the princess has become synonymous with the feminine ideal. Among other things, she cites the “princess industrial complex” and all the ways in which companies and marketers are peddling the princess fantasy to our young daughters (and making boatloads of money in the process). As Orenstein points out, with more than twenty-six thousand
Disney princess items on the market, “ ‘princess’ is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; it’s the largest franchise on the planet for girls ages two to six.”
³

Marta Tantos Aranda explains that little girls start out wanting to be princesses, but later on “their role model isn’t just Hannah Montana or a young gymnast they’ve seen on TV, but very often an older, typically gorgeous teenage girl with long blond hair.” So if the Disney princess is the idealized image of girlhood, the brand that best represents teens’ and tweens’ idealized (if completely unrealistic) image of womanhood is none other than
Barbie (who will turn fifty-three this year). To be sure, this blond bombshell has had her critics, but whether you approve of her and her unnatural proportions or not, you can’t deny her celebrity—or her profitability;
Mattel estimates that two Barbie dolls
are sold somewhere in the world every second of every day, with total sales around $1.5 billion annually
⁴
(which represents one fifth of Mattel’s yearly revenue). When you think about it, it really isn’t altogether shocking that Barbie has endured as one of the most famous cultural icons—and one of the most famous brands—of the past half century. After all, she was designed and marketed to represent exactly what every girl, no matter what decade she’s born in, wants to be: beautiful, glamorous, popular, and adored.