6 Stealth branding

6

STEALTH BRANDING

Not everyone wants to broadcast their brand allegiance by wearing clothing and accessories that are plastered with logos. On the other hand they might not want to go completely anonymous. There are ways to send brand signals to people who know how to understand them, but which go unnoticed by those who don’t.

The idea In the 1970s Stan Smith’s tennis shoes had the “Green Flash” sole, part of his branding that you could see as the wearer ran across the tennis court to make a shot. They were the must have shoe for school sports, partly because they were cool and partly because green wasn’t part of regulation school uniform so you could wear the white shoes and still break the rules just slightly. These days, it’s the red fl ash that turns heads amongst the shoe cognoscenti. Christian Louboutin shoes have red soles. Some people know this, many don’t. They’re at the top end of the shoe market and make all their shoes, from skyscraping stilettos to elegant fl ats, with a scarlet sole, seen from behind as their wearers walk. In 1992 he wanted to add a certain something to make his shoes stand out, so he took red nail varnish and painted the soles red. Since then, he has used a lacquer to give his shoes their shiny scarlet signature.

Louboutin aimed to protect his signature red design vigorously using intellectual property law, and by educating customers in ways to spot counterfeits. Whether or not one can trademark such

a distinctive feature depends on the country’s intellectual property laws, and these vary from extremely tough in France, to fl imsy to the point of ineffectual in part of the developing world. In 2011 he lost a crucial ruling, against Yves Saint Laurent’s use of red soles in their 2011-12 collection, when the courts decided that no-one can own the colour red within the fashion industry.

There is a controversial view that even if a counterfeiter can legally copy what Christian Louboutin does, each red fl ash works in Louboutin’s favour as each one acts as an advertisement for the genuine article. Those who buy the real thing because of the quality workmanship would never want the copies anywhere near their feet. With Paul Smith’s shoes, you can spot his trademark stripes on the soles, if you’re watching carefully.

In practice • Pick a colour or a shape or a pattern. Trademark it if you can. • Stick with it until people start to notice it, and continue to stick with it. • Use it somewhere no one’s thought of, until now.