How would Ben & Jerry’s do it?

One of my first teenage jobs was working as a scooper at the local Ben & Jerry’s outpost. I enjoyed eating a lot of ice cream, but didn’t find it funny the 37th time that somebody, upon seeing my name, asked if Jerry was there.

A few years later, in college, I had a marketing professor who used the brand as a model: If you’re ever stuck creatively, imagine what Ben & Jerry’s would do in that situation.

What would a car designed by the brand look like?

What would their clothing store be like?

What if Ben & Jerry’s started building apartments?

I don’t think this ice cream maker will be getting into real estate any time soon, but you can still see it, right? Maybe there’s a vase for fresh flowers on every front door. Or each floor could have a mascot and a mural. Of course, there’s probably a communal freezer for treats in the lobby.

Ben & Jerry’s has a defining set of values: sustainability, joyfulness, and an overall “peace, love, and ice cream” hippyness that infuses everything they do. And they have a distinct aesthetic sensibility that represents all of that. That’s what the brand is – they just so happen to make ice cream.

That’s why, if you squint, you can imagine sports cars and houses by Ben & Jerry’s, but probably not by Breyers.

Marketer and author Seth Godin wrote about something similar, with Nike:

“If Nike announced that they were opening a hotel, you’d have a pretty good guess about what it would be like. But if Hyatt announced that they were going to start making shoes, you would have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what those shoes would be like. That’s because Nike owns a brand and Hyatt simply owns real estate.”

Titanic brands like Nike, Apple, Starbucks, and Disney all pass this test. But on a slightly smaller scale, so does YETI, Trader Joe’s, Equinox, Uniqlo, Ralph Lauren, Mountain Dew, Taco Bell, and Costco. Visa’s market cap is more than twice as large as American Express’s – but you can see an AMEX burger joint more easily than Visa’s, right?

In many ways, this is the entire business model of Supreme. They literally sold a brick. People lined up for their branded Metrocard. (Though they’re less about changing the experience of a product, and more about imbuing a sense of cool through brand marks alone.)

Great artists steal. Find a brand you admire in a different space, and put yourself in their shoes. Then, steal the results.