Live the Brand
67 years ago, Leo Burnett typed and sent a memo on green paper to “THE ORGANIZATON” in which he wrote:
“I have always been naively guided by the principle that if we do not believe in the products we advertise strongly enough to use them ourselves, we owe it at least to give them a real try. We are not being completely honest with ourselves in advertising them to others.”
The message and lesson is simple: Live the Brand.
It applies today, as much as ever, in a world with more choices than ever before.
In my career, clients have done this well. Perhaps too well. Their worlds are the brands they manage. Sometimes, they miss the big picture—opportunities (or necessary mandates) to partner, innovate, study, or solve a problem with technology.
By contrast, their agency partners can often do much more to Live the Brand. Understanding the product or service and the nuances in how it’s done is key for a marketer. More than that, showing the client that I’m in this with you is priceless.
Looking back on my first 25 years of a career path that started at Young & Rubicam — an agency whose co-founders, like Leo, were born in the late 1800s — I decided to catalogue my most notable, immersive client experiences, in hopes of energizing other agency professionals to do the same.
Living my Client’s Brands
Here are some of the ways lived my client’s brands:
When I worked on Lincoln, I drove a Lincoln LS and lived its V8, RWD performance. The payment was a little steep, but I couldn’t possibly pull up in my Honda Civic anymore.
When I moved over to GM, I leased a Saab 9-3 and lived its turbo I-4 and Scandinavian styling. (Yes, GM owned Saab. May the brand rest in peace.)
Where better than the short track at Martinsville to live GSK’s Goody’s Headache Powder as a sponsor of NASCAR.
I got hooked on SIRIUS|XM during my free trial and lived, firsthand, why they hired us to build an interactive way to discover my favorite stations, set my presets, and get hooked before my trial ended.
One can’t fully appreciate The Estée Lauder Companies until you visit Miss Estée’s office, take in the old photos with presidents, celebrities, and royalty, witness the gold bathroom, and roam the corporate archives. Her salesmanship and drive to succeed is legendary. It’s no surprise that the 42nd floor office is the first stop on the express elevator, ensuring that her guests never had to wait. She literally lived her brand.
ClosetAmerica installed the walk-in that I walk into and live with every morning.
Thompson Creek installed the doors and windows that we look through when deer and fox run by.
In the summer, I live in Rip Curl board shorts, t-shirts, and sometimes a trucker hat. (No, I’ve never surfed.)
I subscribe to the Washington Post with every possible push notification enabled so I can live in the moment.
Utz chips and snacks mean more when you’ve visited Hanover PA, put on a hair net, and watched the semitrucks offload potatoes to be cleaned, cut, fried, and shot through a system of high-speed cameras that can spot the smallest green blemish and discard the inferior chip with a puff of air, sending it down another path to become livestock feed.
Books? Of course it’s Amazon Publishing and Kindle devices living on our night tables.
It took visiting NY, paying for tickets, and bringing my kids to the Empire State Building, as a tourist, to fully live the brand experience.
When you help life-saving non-profits like UNICEF, Every Mother Counts, HRC, and Save a Child’s Heart, you donate even if you, or they, have moved on from the agency.
Playing cards are just cards until you meet the team in Erlanger KY, put your hard hat on, walk the plant, and learn why two sheets of paper must be laminated in a specific way for a specific casino in a dry or humid climate. Or, how a nearly-invisible QR code ensures the integrity of a high-stakes game of Baccarat.
To understand Waymo, taking a ride is only step one. The lobby museum and private garage at Google X gets you closer. But to truly live the brand, you have to understand what motivates Waymo’s non-profit partners to work tirelessly to improve mobility equity and road safety. And the best way to live that remotely is to soak in the stories of people like Max, Charlie, and Brennan.
As a client of 15 years, sure I bought things on eBay, but living the brand takes hearing the stories of so many small businesses who sell online from any corner of the world. Once a year, dozens of them visit DC to share their challenges with policymakers in hopes of shaping policy that supports small business.
I could go on, but I’ll end with this: elbow your way in. Ask for access. As a partner, you’re not overstepping. You’re not being a pain. Get in there and Live the Brand.
Leo Burnett’s Memo: “Scratching the Back of the Hand that Feeds You”
The letter is just so legendary and hard to find online, that I extracted the text with AI for all to read. (If there are ownership rights that I’m unaware of, please contact me and I’ll remove it.)
Enjoy…
LEO BURNETT COMPANY, INC.
OFFICE MEMO
December 16, 1958
TO: THE ORGANIZATION
FROM: Leo Burnett
Re: Scratching the Back of the Hand that Feeds You
This is a land (and a company) of free choice and free speech.
In this memo, I would like to exercise my own right to free speech to express some thoughts about choice.
I hope you know me well enough to realize that your opportunities with this company have nothing whatsoever to do with your personal way of life or the products you use. Loyalty, obviously, cannot be legislated.
Nevertheless, I would like to get off my chest some thoughts that have been smoldering for a long time. I present them only as the way I personally feel. If they don’t relate to you, that’s that, and no harm is done.
As you well know, your income and mine are derived 100% from the sale of the products of our clients.
During the 36 years I have been in the agency business, I have always been naively guided by the principle that if we do not believe in the products we advertise strongly enough to use them ourselves, we owe it at least to give them a real try. We are not being completely honest with ourselves in advertising them to others.
The very least we can do is to remain neutral, and I guess this memo was touched off by two recent incidents.
Recently, I overheard one of our people sound off with some loud and derogatory remarks about what lousy cars Chrysler makes—how they fall apart—"I guess I’ll stick to a Chevy," etc.
In another instance, I heard one of our people who smokes Winstons, I believe, say to a group of outsiders, when offered a Marlboro, "I can’t smoke those things!"
I’m sure you’ll agree that this is going a bit too far.
The net of the way I feel is this:
Naturally, you don’t need to do all your banking at Harris, but you should certainly think of Harris when opening a new or separate account.
Maybe you don’t eat canned vegetables, but if you do, those products with the Green Giant label should find a space in your shopping cart.
Certainly, nobody would suggest that you tear up your insurance program, but shouldn’t you look at the Allstate story on any new coverage you want?
If the picture is still sharp on your old RCA, keep on looking, but do look at Motorola when you change. The same applies to vacuum cleaners and washing machines.
Maybe you have bunions and need a special orthopedic shoe, but you might consider Buster Browns or Robinhoods for those nice, normal feet your kids run around on.
When you go on your next car-trading expedition, one of the Chrysler lines should at least be on your looking-list.
Generally, the products of our clients enable us to have a good breakfast, keep the house clean, wash our clothes, fertilize our lawns, neatly plaster up cuts and bruises, gas up the car (one of "ours"), insure it, keep our faces, teeth, and dishes clean, bake a cake or pie, have soup, tuna, spaghetti, peas, or corn for lunch or dinner, send our hogs to market faster, make our hens lay more eggs, walk well-shod, and relax with a good cigarette while we watch TV or listen to Stereo Hi-Fi.
I recognize the unconscious spirit of rebellious independence that exists in all of us, and the compulsion you or I may have to demonstrate that we wear no man’s yoke. I have always felt, however, that there were better and more rewarding ways of doing this than in conspicuously avoiding or flouting the products of the people who pay our way.
I’ll let the kids off the hook. I don’t believe in the principle of reminding them of where their living is coming from. (They’ll learn soon enough as it is.) If, for example, they are attracted to a premium offered by General Mills or General Foods, bless their fickle little hearts. We’ll catch ‘em next time.
I guess my feeling is pretty well summed up in the remarks of the vice-president of a competitive agency. When asked why he was smoking a not-too-popular brand of cigarettes which his company advertised, he replied:
"In my book there is no taste or aroma quite like that of bread and butter."
Leo Burnett
P.S. Inasmuch as this memo expresses an entirely personal point of view, I can’t resist adding that if any of us eats those nauseating Post Toasties or Wheaties, for example, in preference to the products of Kellogg’s, I hope he chokes on them; and if any of us fertilizes his lawn without first trying Golden Vigoro, I hope it turns to a dark, repulsive brown. If you smoke cigarettes and your taste is so sensitive that it discriminates strongly between "our brands" and competitive ones, please, as a personal favor, don’t put the competitive package in front of me on the conference room table, because it does things to my blood pressure.
LB
