Valentine’s Day gives me an excuse to comment (as so many others have) on Chipotle’s “Back to the Start”. This two-minute ad has been steadily accumulating YouTube views since August but inspired a frenzy of social commentary when it aired nationally during the Grammys.

The connection between pigs and Valentine’s Day? Passion, of course.

It’s Chipotle’s passion for “food with integrity” that so impresses me. Most brands assume consumers aren’t interested in or shouldn’t know about the supply-chain: where ingredients come from, how they’re made and what their social impact may be. (Indeed Fast Company has pointed out how unusual this is in the fast food space.)

Chipotle’s passion for their ingredients and where they come from is in a class of its own. They’ve orchestrated a shift in the conversation around ingredients that some said stole the spotlight during the Grammys (a big feat given the competition between animated pigs and, say, Adele).

It may be off-putting to some (I dunno, people who don’t like cute farm animals?) but I’d hazard that it will inspire intense loyalty in its customers (it certainly does in me) as well as ever-increasing awareness and market share for the brand. 

What is the most enduring logo?  Not the Apple or IBM’s iconic logos, but the skull and crossbones.  According to the New York Times it’s the “Jolly Roger” skull and crossbones that first appeared in the early 1700s and was rapidly adopted by most pirates.

“The key to its success was clarity of meaning, which is an essential element in every effective branding project, and any other form of communication design. Just as Nike’s ‘swoosh’ logo makes us think of speed and the horse-drawn carriage in Hermès’s identity screams posh, the sight of a skull and crossbones on a ship’s flag signaled one thing to 18th-century sailors like those on the Poole or the merchant vessels they were protecting: terror.”

The pirates’ strong brand caused the ships that they targeted to surrender out of fear, so the pirates used less ammunition, incurred less casualties and could pillage their victims more quickly, then they could presumably attack that many more ships, increasing their profit margin.

Evidently the Jolly Roger was also a very adaptable logo like the Nickelodeon and Google logos are today.

“A black flag signified that the pirates would ‘give quarter’ or spare the lives of those who surrendered, and a red one signaled ‘no quarter.’”

“Wynn’s hourglass declared that time was running out for his victims. Other pirates added macabre motifs such as skeletons, daggers or spears. One of Black Bart’s flags sported two skulls, each representing an enemy against whom he was plotting vengeance.”

Alas the power of the Jolly Roger logo waned quickly. By the mid 1700s the skull and crossbones had moved from being a icon of lawlessness to being adopted as a British regimental emblem and later the symbol for poison.  It’s still a icon of the rebel and outlaw, but more cheeky than fearsome as it can be found on biker’s jackets and infant’s onesies.

Today is the 50th anniversary of humans entering space. This was a huge accomplishment that opened opportunities for new research, which led to many of the discoveries of the last half-century. It yielded deep national pride for the Soviets and an imminent sense of the need to capture the moon for the Americans.

This is an analogy for brands: where’s the new frontier to cross? Who’s leading the way? Who needs to catch up? What are the new discoveries? What’s the competition doing?

And now fast forward to today: the US space program is winding down and humans may for the first time in history be moving slower than in previous generations (walking to horses to trains to cars to air flight to space to ???).

So what do brands need to do to keep the momentum moving? Was your brand’s last campaign like a sustained rocket ship? Or did it fizzle out?

Shout out to Google for the cool landing page today and NPR’s article!

My colleague Martin Potter is one of those runners who makes the rest of us feel a bit lame. Turns out he has a blog about his running — it has some great insights into how running brands market themselves:

http://cheekyrunning.blogspot.com/2010/12/marketers-thoughts-on-running-gear.html

What I wonder is where Martin finds the time to sleep, what with all his working and blogging and marathon running?