Package Deal

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I’m confused by my cereal numbers. They’re part of the results from an Arruda-patented online survey that about 20 friends and colleagues answered my call to anonymously complete. People think that I’m quite a lot like granola, Cheerios, Bran Flakes, Corn Flakes, Kashi soy-based products and steel-cut oatmeal. It’s chaos to my eye, but Arruda sorts the data with ease. He points out that every cereal comment flagged “a split personality thing. Corn Flakes, wholesome but somehow fun; Cheerios, pop culture appeal but still good for you; granola, substantive but nutty. Meaning you’re serious and wholesome, but then you have this quirky side too.”

Which I can accept. It’s not the worst feedback I received. Somebody out there thinks I’m arrogant. Somebody else likened me to a gas-guzzling SUV. But criticism isn’t the problem. As Arruda and I plow through our second hour of Timothy Taylorizing and on into the third, it’s narcissism nausea that’s getting to me. So people seem to agree that I’m smart, creative, driven and charming. Great! But there are 80 other adjectives listed by survey respondents to describe me, and I challenge you to look at any list of 80 words describing you for 2 1/2 hours and tell me if the page doesn’t start to warp inward and your vision begin to blur. I’m prepared (in the spirit of research) to pimp the ride of my personality, but where should I start?

I decide to focus on that cereal data, but not for the results themselves. (How am I supposed to gain category dominance with “wholesome but quirky”?) What interests me is Arruda’s rationale for the brand comparison with cereal itself – and car brand comparisons and soon dog breed comparisons too. “People sometimes have a hard time picking your personal attributes, but they find it easy to compare you to another brand,” explains Arruda.

In other words, corporate brands have moved so close to consumers in the guise of personal relationship that we’re now just as likely to describe real people in terms of brands (he’s a Volvo or a cocker spaniel) as we would be to use the language of people (he’s dependable). No wonder General Mills was quoted in The New York Times Magazine describing consumer loyalty to Cheerios as being “beyond reason.” It is beyond reason just as love is beyond reason. Consumers love Cheerios as they might a human character, which is why General Mills hired the Portland firm Character to work on the brand in the first place. And right here, on the topic of love and branding, I have the sense of watching Tom Peters’ seminal idea do a trick, like a snake swallowing its own tail.

“Branding is all about emotion,” Arruda explains. “It really is. Do people love you? What makes you lovable?” Indeed, Arruda often uses something he calls the love-hate index to evaluate the power of a brand. “I do it all the time – go into Google and type, ‘I love Starbucks’ and ‘I hate Starbucks’ or ‘I love Apple’ and ‘I hate Apple’ or ‘I love Target’ and ‘I hate Target,’ and there are millions of results. That’s the connection between branding and emotion.”

And this is important, he continues, because emotional factors drive even the most rational business decisions. A survey at IBM and Lotus revealed that IT executives – described by Arruda as “conservative, structured thinkers, introverted” – made investments based on emotional brand attributes: “what makes me look good, what makes me popular.” And if those are the qualities people look for in cars and cereals and mainframe computers, says Arruda, reaching his climax, “who better to deliver on emotion than people? We are naturals for the branding process.”

So this is where we’ve arrived. People want to fall in love. People brand products to give them human character. People fall in love with the branded products that have human character. Then other people start branding themselves like products that have human character in order to make other people fall in love with them just like they did with those products.

I part with Arruda exhausted, truthfully. Marathon self-analysis is taxing. So too the high-concept Sketch, with its innovative toilets and interactive light sculptures. But what’s weighing on me more is a question: What would happen if everybody were personally branded, unifying individual identity and commercial undertaking in the culture at large? Wouldn’t everybody then assume everybody else to be on-brand all the time? And in that case, wouldn’t everybody also understand that all the “Love” floating around, ghosted in the air, was actually a neon optical illusion?

I go find a pub to ponder matters. I could not have made the following up. On tap at the bar, I find Timothy Taylor’s Landlord ale (timothy-taylor.co.uk). From my seat at the window, I spy just down the way the Timothy Taylor Gallery (timothytaylorgallery.com). I think two thoughts. First, this is a Joey Skaggs-style art prank at my expense. Then, more reasonably, this is a cosmic signal not to worry much about my earlier question. The commercial and the personal may indeed mingle, even fuse. We three Timothy Taylors, for that matter, could merge. Rationalize the Timothy Taylor brand once and for all (although no talks are in progress at the moment). But there will always have been the originating three of us, unique and infinitesimally differentiated, lovable or otherwise. And that, being a matter of birthright, could not be smoothed away with even the most ambitious branding program.

It’s a toast-worthy reassurance. And I raise my glass to it. 

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