Awesome scene from the movie “Crazy, Stupid, Love” but ouch,
if you manage the Gap brand. (Every time this movie is on cable I watch). How did they go from being a brand on the top
with the coolest dance commercials that everyone talked about to the butt of a
Ryan Gosling joke? Now that I think about it, those cool dance commercials were
a long time ago, and I can’t remember the last time I was in a Gap.
Anyone in marketing knows how hard it is to manage a brand
in a large company with a million different people delivering the brand
experience and a million things out of your control. A nice brand standards document doesn’t do
much if people don’t know about it or ignore it. Well-intentioned co-workers
put the logo in a fun new color or shape and your brand equity starts to erode.
Or you publicly unveil a new logo that should appear to be
more modern and contemporary but then roll it back a week later because of all the
outrage on social media. The new logo gets its own Twitter handle and there’s
more salt in the wound. Poor Gap. Logo debacle in 2010, this movie quote from
2011 and it’s still lingering.
Steve Carell’s character goes through his own re-branding in
the movie. Ryan Gosling plays his new
brand consultant. Now we all can’t have
Ryan Gosling coaching us on how to be personally relevant but I like the idea
of keeping an eye on your personal brand and growing as a human being.
Last year I started an urban garden and grew my own
vegetables. It’s empowering to be able
to grow your own food. To come home from
work, pick some fresh broccoli and peppers and have a nice little home grown
dinner. It’s also very satisfying to share the bounty with friends and family
when you have more peppers than you could possibly eat. My mom has already requested that I add
radishes this year.
I also took golf lessons and was immediately hooked. I love hitting a bucket of balls, playing a
par three with my nephew or golfing a full 18 holes at a fancy Palm Springs
golf course. I just joined a league. It’s
been a long time since I had a hobby that required practice.
Who knows if gardening or golf make my personal brand more
relevant to the world. They make me
happy and that’s a core value of my brand J
