A new campaign had just launched the spots were quirky, slice-of-life ads with celebrity voice-overs. Before we begin, one of them pops in a video of a competitive ad that has just arrived.
Two senior executives of PepsiCo’s ad agency BBDO New York join me to discuss Mountain Dew. The New York skyline beckons through the long row of windows. The oversized room is overflowing with white furniture. But for me, as for millions of American teens, Cheap Trick mattered a lot for those precious few years of the late 1970s. I stopped listening to them over twenty years ago, and I was not alone. The band started pumping out album after album of trite, melodramatic songs. Cheap Trick made four amazing records (as every rock fan knows), and then someone pulled the plug. I thought this was very cool (but had no idea why). Yet his guitar sound was even tougher and more inventive than those heavy metal heroes he did them one better but without the testosterone. With his cardigan sweater, short hair, and baseball cap, he pranced around stage, kicking his legs in the air like a Las Vegas chorus girl, plying the crowd with strange, cartoonish expressions. At a time when rock guitarists had long hair, wore tight pants, showed chest hair, and played their guitars as if they were Freudian appendages, Nielsen dressed like a nerdy teenager. Nielsen felled every stereotype in the rock handbook.
I even dressed like him for Halloween parties.
My hero was Cheap Trick’s lead guitarist, Rick Nielsen. But my heart belonged to the hometown heroes-Rockford’s own Cheap Trick. As a high-schooler, I loved many bands-at first Boston and Kiss, and then Styx, Aerosmith, and Ted Nugent.
#HARLEQUIN ROMANCE NOVELS WITH SOMETHING ABOUT A STUFFED BUNNY THAT SMELLS LIKE MILK FULL#
When famous Chicago radio deejay Steve Dahl blew up a dumpster full of disco records at Comiskey Park before a baseball game, I cheered. I bought albums, played air guitar, attended dozens of concerts, made my own cassettes, and took hundreds of concert photos. Like most guys I knew, I was a rock-and-roll kid. While Rockford always seemed to end up around 297 on lists of the top 300 livable cities, for teens who didn’t yet have to hustle up a job, the city could still be a good time. I grew up in Rockford, Illinois, a small industrial city that boasted one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates in the late 1970s, right up there with Flint, Michigan. Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Preface and Acknowledgments CHAPTER 1 - What Is an Iconic Brand? CHAPTER 2 - How Is Cultural Branding Different? CHAPTER 3 - Targeting Myth Markets CHAPTER 4 - Composing the Cultural Brief CHAPTER 5 - Leveraging Cultural and Political Authority CHAPTER 6 - Managing Brand Loyalty as a Social Network CHAPTER 7 - Coauthoring the Myth CHAPTER 8 - Advancing the Myth CHAPTER 9 - Branding as Cultural Activism APPENDIX - Methods Notes Selected Bibliography Index About the Author HD69.B7H647 2003 658.8′27-dc22 2004002697 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992. Includes bibliographical references and index. How brands become icons: the principles of cultural branding / Douglas B. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Holt, Douglas B. Requests for permission should be directed to, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163. How Brands Become Icons The Principles of Cultural BrandingĬopyright 2004 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher.