An Iconic World
We live in a world flooded with iconography. Everywhere you look there are logos attempting to convey a meaning or help you remember a message.
Despite all the examples in our modern day world – the Nike swoosh, the Apple logo, the gay pride flag – the masters of iconography and marketing lived centuries ago: pirates.
These swashbucklers can teach our businesses and social movements how to rally a tribe and welcome supporters using imagery.
A Branding Campaign to Terrify into Compliance
Pirates are known for terrorizing the open seas, especially in the late 1600′s and early 1700′s in the Caribbean. While they did not all look like Johnny Depp, they did use the skull and cross bones flag, along with a flag of a heart dripping blood and a flag with an hour glass. Often their flags were red to signify blood, thus the name Jolly Roger, an English corruption of the French, jolie rouge, or pretty red.
Why the flag? Pirates learned that they could use a symbol to tell their targets who they were. As Roman Mars puts it in his podcast 99% Invisible, it was: “A branding campaign to terrify their targets into compliance.”
If the ships gave up without a fight, the pirates didn’t risk losing their lives and could steal their booty more quickly. For that reason an hour glass, representing the time ships had to surrender before being killed, or a skull and cross bones representing death were icons of choice.
The Birth of the Skull and Cross Bones
Interestingly, the skull and cross bones did not always mean death. In fact, it meant the opposite.
Throughout the Middle Ages, artistic images depicting Jesus on the cross would have a skull and two bones in the shape of a cross at Jesus’ feet. The skull represented Adam’s skull, or death, while the two bones in a cross represented Jesus’ resurrection, or rebirth.
Centuries later as merchant ships carried goods across the seas, the captains would keep logs of the passengers. If a passenger died during a voyage, the captain would put a little skull and cross bones next to their name, just as artists had done next to Jesus.
Soon sailors began associating the skull and cross bones with death, while the rebirth aspect of the symbol was lost.
Pirate Scandal and Iconic Popularity
Pirates wanted to scare sailors, so it made sense that they would use an image associated with death: the skull and cross bones.
In 1728 a pirate named Calico Jack Rackem was captured and put on trial. In the trial it came out that two of his pirates were women, one of which was carrying his baby. This was a tabloid scandal everyone was reading about, and it just so happened that Calico Jack’s symbol was the Jolly Roger.
The skull and cross bones continued to evolve. It was put on book covers as people read about the Calico Jack soap opera. Then German pharmaceutical companies added it to bottles of poison. Later the Nazis adopted it for their SS death sentence.
Now the skull and cross bones have gone mainstream. From Disney to iPhone cases, the skull and cross bones no longer signifies danger or poison, and definitely not rebirth. It continues to evolve.
Two Marketing Lessons from Pirates
1. An icon can rally a tribe and send a message.
2. The message from an icon changes over time.
Icons are created not to speak to everyone but only to a specific audience.
In the pirates’ world, it was designed to communicate (and scare) sailors. In our world, our marketing should not attempt to appeal to everyone. Instead our messaging and design should focus on our niche or tribe, those people we want to attract as customers, supporters and evangelists.
As soon as you create an icon, message, website or other piece of marketing, you no longer own it. Middle Age artists could never have imagined that their symbol would be used to label bottles of poison.
Instead of worrying about trademarking, copyrighting and protecting the visible brand of your company, focus on creating an audacious goal that your work and marketing represent. Your brand then becomes a legacy of work instead of a piece of art.
When your brand is not a simple logo but a concept or vision, others will build upon your brand. You let go of control of the visual brand but in doing so you enable others to spread brand’s vision.
Misfits and Branding a Mission
A perfect example of rallying and inviting a tribe with a brand is Misfit, Inc.
AJ and Melissa of Misfit, Inc. are humanitarians who also happen to run a creative agency, the best conference I’ve ever attended and a publishing company. They not only run an agency but also encourage others to stand up and stand out as creative, independent and defiant visionaries.
To rally their tribe of misfits, they developed the visual representation of a Misfit: an anime representation of Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt.
In the battle, Henry V faced overwhelming odds. Outnumbered and outflanked, he triumphed losing only 112 men compared to an estimated 10,000 casualties on the French side. The battle is famously memorialized in Shakespeare’s Henry V with the famous line: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends…”
The misfit icon sends a clear message of defiance, but the message of what a misfit does is open to interpretation. Metal workers, artists, marketers and community organizers all identify themselves as misfits. Crowdfunding a book, interviewing fellow visionaries and building a local community are all ways to be a misfit as defined by the tribe.
AJ, Melissa and company don’t control what a Misfit is, and that’s ok. They’ve created the vision, the icon and are open to new interpretations on their vision.
Casting a Vision
Your business needs a vision of what it does and most importantly why it does. When that mission is identified, create the visual representation that will speak to your tribe. Do not stop at speaking to them; instead, make it a conversation. Invite them to adopt your vision and make it their own.
In time, you will create iconic symbols and movements that will truly change the world and scare the status quo like Calico Jack.
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