Trust in the Future

And in doing so, they would absolutely fuck up Harley-Davidson as a lovemark. As a lovemark, Harley-Davidson has two things. One is its signature rumbling sound. The other is that you can't go very fast on a Harley, so you have to ride in a pack. As soon as you can go fast, it's all over, baby! Then it's you and the open road -- and a Harley is all about you, about your mates, and about riding in a pack on the open road, tooling around at 80 mph. The mystery of the Harley isn't in its performance, and it isn't in any of the words that end in "ER." Most brands are built on "ER" words -- faster, bigger, better, cleaner. Mystery doesn't need those words.

A trustmark connects with you emotionally -- and then you go and find out the information about it that you need.

Trustmarks offer you their entire history. Trustmarks find a way to combine the past and the present in one sensual package. If you think of yourself as being locked in the past, it's very hard to be cool. But when your brand combines the past and the present, that's a trustmark. Think of Mercedes-Benz. What does it own? It owns passion, and it owns passion in a way that combines both the past and the present. It's able to tap into design, history, sensuality, look, feel, mystery, cool. It's chilling.

I'm on the board of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union team, the All Blacks. I know for a fact that there is no opposition as intimidating as your opponent's legacy. When you play against the All Blacks, you're going up against a team that has a 74% win record over the past 104 years, the most sensational winning percentage in all of global sport. You're not just playing against the players on the current team -- you're playing against all of the guys who ever put on that jersey. And you're playing against those standards. The All Blacks wear all-black shirts and all-black shorts. There's a saying about the team from the 1930s: "The All Blacks come to the game already in mourning for the opposition."

We've just done a $100 million deal with Adidas for it to sponsor the All Blacks gear. Adidas told us that it's doing the deal not because it wants to be associated with rugby but because using the All Blacks jersey builds its brand value by being associated with the team's legacy, its tradition, and its history. Adidas wants to be about authentic, competitive warriors from the past.

These days, if you don't have a past, then you need to create your own legends and myths very fast. We do live in Internet years, so your culture can become a legendary, mythical thing in six months.

It's the spirit, not the values. Trustmarks are surrounded by mythical stories and characters. Brands are obsessed with values. Brand values, company values -- all crap! They've got it completely wrong, which is why they stay brands. To me, it's all about spirit, not about values.

Who knows what the values of the Wild West were? Who cares? But we all know what the spirit of the Wild West was adventure, romanticism, individualism. What we're looking for are stories and characters that communicate the spirit of a trustmark, not the values of a brand. We've moved from a passive notion onto something that is much more expressive. Look at Nike and Phil Knight. Here is a guy who's got a swoosh tattooed on his ankle! That's fantastic -- and it's never going away. Nike was built by athletes like Steve Prefontaine. He was an Oregon athlete, a great competitor, who loved running. He was totally authentic, and he wore Nike running shoes, because he was that kind of guy. The Prefontaine story is all about spirit. It tells you that Nike is a company that was created for athletes, by athletes, about athletes. There's a creation myth that goes along with the company.

You carry an icon in your heart. Trustmarks are surrounded by iconic characters. The Marlboro Man. The Nike swoosh. The Macintosh Apple. Ronald McDonald. If you can capture the spirit of a trustmark in a single iconic character, you've got a huge head start. An iconic character is shorthand. When a company has an iconic character, and they flash it at you, they're already inside, already talking to you. And they're not talking to your head but to your heart.

Sometimes you see iconic logos that companies don't use. To me, the Tide bull's-eye is a logo that P&G has never exploited. A few months ago, I was at a music studio when Neil Young walked in wearing a T-shirt with the Tide bull's-eye on it. Here's Neil Young, one of the most noncommercial guys in the music world, and he's wandering around wearing the Tide logo on his shirt! It's cool enough for Neil Young, but somehow it isn't cool enough for the people in the company in Cincinnati? When you see something like that, you know that your logo has moved from just a logo to something that everyone has embraced as a cultural symbol.