Art and Culture, Articles

The biggest brand in the world right now isn’t selling search, touch or performance: it’s wooing consumers through a historically unparalleled romance with the undead.

Google? Apple? Nike? Whatever. For all of the passion, love and sex that’s happening between humans and vampires right now, Twilight and True Blood are leading the way in cultural brand currency. Innovation has something to do with it.

But Twilight and True Blood are not the brand in question, merely the vehicles of it. Granted, they are their own brands. Stephanie Meyer’s series of books – Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn – have crested the 30 million copies mark, with the last installment selling 1.3 million copies in the U.S. on its first day of release. The film adaptation of book #1 grossed over $380 million in American theatres, the DVD (still selling) sold over 3 million copies on its first day of release in the U.S., and the buzz at the end of filming New Moon is so loud that its debut will likely trounce the franchise’s last set of day-one numbers. Then, of course, there’s the merchandising: vampire kits, t-shirts, calendars, jewelry, jewelry boxes, posters, key rings, buttons, The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion and a whole universe of fan-made merchandise.

In contrast, Charlaine Harris’ The Southern Vampire Mysteries series presents less of a case study in the runaway hit. Its TV adaptation, True Blood, is, nonetheless, one of HBO’s bigger successes and, for those into season 2, it’s not hard to see why: script, blood, the South, Anna Paquin and sex.

It’s in the sex – or, more accurately, between the sex, the romance and the social implications of it – that’s the essence of where, why and how this new brand exists. Historically, its been there in trace elements for nearly a century. In Bram Stoker’s positivist approach to the cultural and technological shifts scaring people at the time in Dracula it was there. But it was Hollywood over the years, not Bram, which flushed out the vampire’s raw sexuality and the sexual power of the woman willing to be bitten by him.

That’s where Bella and Sookie come in. And it’s where millions of women around the world and from ages 11 to 40 join them. Thanks to Stephanie Meyer and Charlaine Harris, Bella and Sookie have transformed the mythologies of vampires and female sexuality. Given the canon of patriarchal Euro culture within (and against) which both women are written, that’s no small feat. In fact, it’s very innovative; and that’s why this brand is catching on. How?

First, in the process of seeing, meeting, pursuing and consummating their attractions to Edward and Bill, Bella and Sookie are doing what Carol Thurston in The Romance Revolution and Janice Radway in Reading The Romance have told us women have been doing through racy reading for years: breaking rules, forming rules, and exploring the boundaries of sexuality. By jumping back and forth across those boundaries via alternate identifications with masculine characters and narratives or feminine characters and narratives, these women are redefining – or better yet, de-defining – what the rules of experience (sexual and otherwise) and fantasy are or should be.

Second, through relationships with Edward and Bill, Bella and Sookie are legitimizing the presence of the vampire in public, human space. With a few exceptions – such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer (not George Hamilton in Love At First Bite – co-existence and coming out have never been explored to this extent. That’s powerful, if only because Twilight and True Blood are changing the rules of the “horror” genre by confronting the struggles – in high school and the South, two of the more socially competitive arenas in popular film and fiction – of the marginalized Other. Like Bram’s positivist leanings, this coming out (or in to) society has its own contemporary correlations that critics might locate between Gitmo, the beginning of the second quarter century of AIDS, accepting new Friends into your network, and the change/transformation theme at the root of Obama-ism, 2012, design culture and this whole innovation thingy.

Third, in allowing their vampire boyfriends to bite them (I haven’t read Harris’ series so I can’t speak on whether Sookie is turned) Bella and Sookie take their transformation to heart. Their experience is the ultimate phenomenological commitment to exploring and becoming the other.

And that’s where adding 36 pounds of muscle to your brand comes in. For those of you unfamiliar with the reference, ’36 pounds of muscle’ refers to where the fan focus on the Twilight franchise has turned: to an 18-year old teen heartthrob actor named Taylor Lautner. Between passion and obsession, tween girls and adult women, Taylor is the shit in hot boy business right now.

What’s hot about him? Well for the girls and women – and gay men, too – Taylor has, between the first Twilight film and shooting of the second, New Moon, managed to pack an extra 36 pounds of muscle onto his smooth, 18-year old body. From a branding perspective, the fan mythology surrounding the story of the film’s producers saying “Put on the muscle or we’ll find another actor” has been pure genius. True or not (because when it comes to mythology ‘truth’ doesn’t really matter), one brand message has been successfully transmitted: hard work, determination and focus pay off. In the process, Rob Pattinson has had to cede a little of his celebrity space to the gangly kid who warned Bella about Edward in the first movie.

As an interesting side note, it wasn’t until the hard work paid off that Lautner’s history as an accomplished young martial artist came to light – a major media talking point directed towards him and another perk for the brand’s authenticity. Furthermore, when the movie finally drops in November there will, I predict, be another major talking point, one that is, arguably, more of a radical shift in the real world than anything so far pushed by the franchise: Hollywood has it’s first First Nations teen hearth throb.

This is huge. Sure, people will talk about his French, Dutch and German background – but those of us who recognize the phenotype deficit in Hollywood will see that having a young superstar with Ottawa and Potawatomi heritage on the big screen marks a shift in American popular culture that is close to if not equally as monumental as the American political shift that brought us a black president.

But Lautner’s 36 pounds of muscle are more than that and do more than that. Wrapped in his character – a First Nations teen living on a reserve who is also in love with Bella and just happens to be a werewolf whose clan has been the traditional enemies of the vampires for ages – they speak to how and why the Twilight brand is so successful. And, if you’ll set aside your snob critic leanings for just a minute, you might discover how appreciating, understanding and empathizing with the Twilight consumer can help your brand add 36 pounds of muscle. Because judging from some of the cluelessness that’s registering on my smart chart these days, some of brand managers and others could desperately use it.

To make it simple – and I apologize for those of you who have struggled to read this far without the assistance of PowerPoint or an Executive Summary – I’ll break each tip into 6 pounds of muscle. Add what you can…..

Romance: Passion, lust, heartbreak, loss, discovery, exploration, and crossing new thresholds: these are all hallmarks of the romance. Are any of them hallmarks of your brand? I teased Google, Apple and Nike at the beginning of this post, but those three brands understand and help facilitate 5 of those features. Does yours?

Transformation: Liminality, change, metamorphosis and rites of passage drive much of the narrative structure of Twilight (and True Blood). Do they drive your brand? Creating a story around your brand that is real – it’s embedded in the very DNA of your product or service offering – and that helps consumers take baby or big steps towards personal growth is going to more and more going to define who leads and who follows in the business and culture worlds of Obama-Lautner-and-beyond.

Risk: Potentially dodgy situation are at the heart of romance and transformation. It’s what makes them exciting, engaging and, when the story is told well, makes us identify with and live through those taking them. Even without vampires and werewolves, we live in a world where risks – and identifying/empathizing with those who take them – are valued for their potentially romantic and transformative powers. How is your brand a heroine brand? Do your customers see you as safe and conservative, or willing to strike out into the unknown and take a chance that could pay off in ways your focus groups could never tell you?

Context: Yes, there is some vestigal value to the micro-manufacturing of consumer segments in the market research your brand does. It is true that customer needs do vary across ages, gender, geographies, ethnicities and such. But Twilight should stand as a model for what smart and skilled ethnographers have been trying to tell you for ages: context rules in conducting research. Tween girls love Twilight. Adult women love Twilight. There are boys and men who love it, too. Some narrative bits and pieces might be applied a little differently across these segments, but the insights you’re searching for to step up your brand’s game are to be found in the imagination of readers, not how you imagine the readers in your boardroom. Next time you want to create opportunity space around energy drinks, consider skipping research on 20-somethings in bars and explore other scenarios where focus, stamina, power and longevity live like mixed martial arts, Asian cram schools, meditation or yoga, extreme travel.

Tweens: Start young. That’s all I can say. You can look at the numbers for the family finances they influence. You can look at their intense levels of engagement with new and emerging media. Or you can look at how their expectations for healthier, faster, better, more personalize and more honest are going to determine whether your brand lives or dies in about 10 years. Whatever you look at, don’t fight the power – recognize it!

Society: Maybe you cast different faces in your cheese commercials. Maybe you don’t even shoot commercials for your territory but, instead, throw subtitles on your brand’s latest spot running in India. Or maybe you finally recognize what the first word in the phrase ‘social media’ really means when it comes to designing your platform. Whatever small transformation you decide to engage in, take a lesson from making friends and boyfriends of vampires and werewolves: there is a huge disconnect in how consumers are conceiving the world of people in and around them and the dusty old approach some brands continue to take to who is in (and who is not) their circle of business.

An innovative idea is innovative only if it fits into existing or emerging cultural patterns and performances. Otherwise it’s just another idea – good or bad – that sits on a shelf gathering dust. And a successful boost to a brand requires the kind of innovation raw materials that can only come from plunging your hearts and minds head first into the lives and stories of consumers. Given the popularity of Twilight and True Blood, there are a number of innovations-in-narrative have already caught on en masse. Both are ongoing sagas that will continue to reinforce and explore the power new and emerging cultural patterns and performances that, unless you add 36 pounds of muscle to your brand, will leave you eating sand that the skinny guy in the back of the comics those of us with tween girls remember when we lived our romances and transformations through Peter Parker.