Fast forward to 1998. The Gap launches its breakthrough Khakis Swing ads: a simple, exuberant miniature music video set to "Jump, Jive 'n' Wail"-and a great video at that. The question of whether these ads were "coopting" the artistic integrity of the music was entirely meaningless. The Gap's commercials didn't capitalize on the retro swing revival-a solid argument can be made that they caused caused the swing revival. A few months later, when singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright appeared in a Christmas-themed Gap ad, his sales soared, so much so that his record company began promoting him as "the guy in the Gap ads." Macy Gray, the new R&B "It Girl," also got her big break in a Baby Gap ad. And rather than the Gap Khaki ads looking like rip-offs of MTV videos, it seemed that overnight, every video on MTV-from Brandy to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys-looked like a Gap ad; the company has pioneered its own aesthetic, which spilled out into music, other advertis.e.m.e.nts, even films like the swing revival. A few months later, when singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright appeared in a Christmas-themed Gap ad, his sales soared, so much so that his record company began promoting him as "the guy in the Gap ads." Macy Gray, the new R&B "It Girl," also got her big break in a Baby Gap ad. And rather than the Gap Khaki ads looking like rip-offs of MTV videos, it seemed that overnight, every video on MTV-from Brandy to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys-looked like a Gap ad; the company has pioneered its own aesthetic, which spilled out into music, other advertis.e.m.e.nts, even films like The Matrix The Matrix. After five years of intense lifestyle branding, the Gap, it has become clear, is as much in the culture-creation business as the artists in its ads.

For their part, many artists now treat companies like the Gap less as deep-pocketed pariahs trying to feed off their cachet than as just another medium they can exploit in order to promote their own brands, alongside radio, video and magazines. "We have to be everywhere. We can't afford to be too precious in our marketing," explains Ron Shapiro, executive vice president of Atlantic Records. Besides, a major ad campaign from Nike or the Gap penetrates more nooks and crannies of the culture than a video in heavy rotation on MTV or a cover article in Rolling Stone Rolling Stone. Which is why piggybacking on these campaign blitzes-Fat Boy Slim in Nike ads, Brandy in Cover Girl commercials, Lil' Kim rapping for Candies-has become, Business Week Business Week announced with much glee, "today's top 40 radio." announced with much glee, "today's top 40 radio."13 Of course the branding of music is not a story of innocence lost. Musicians have been singing ad jingles and signing sponsorship deals since radio's early days, as well as having their songs played on commercial radio stations and signing deals with multinational record companies. Throughout the eighties-music's decade of the straight-up shill-rock stars like Eric Clapton sang in beer ads, and the pop stars, appropriately enough, crooned for pop: George Michael, Robert Plant, Whitney Houston, Run-DMC, Madonna, Robert Palmer, David Bowie, Tina Turner, Lionel Richie and Ray Charles all did Pepsi or c.o.ke ads, while sixties anthems like the Beatles' "Revolution" became background music for Nike commercials.

During this same period, the Rolling Stones made music history by ushering in the era of the sponsored rock tour-and fittingly, sixteen years later, it is still the Stones who are leading the charge into the latest innovation in corporate rock: the band as brand extension. In 1981, Jovan-a distinctly un-rock-and-roll perfume company-sponsored a Rolling Stones stadium tour, the first arrangement of its kind, though tame by today's standards. Though the company got its logos on a few ads and banners, there was a clear distinction between the band that had chosen to "sell out" and the corporation that had paid a huge sum to a.s.sociate itself with the inherent rebelliousness of rock. This subordinate status might have been fine for a company out merely to move products, but when designer Tommy Hilfiger decided that the energy of rock and rap would become his "brand essence," he was looking for an integrated experience, one more in tune with his own transcendent ident.i.ty quest. The results were evident in the Stones' Tommy-sponsored Bridges to Babylon tour in 1997. Not only did Hilfiger have a contract to clothe Mick Jagger, he also had the same arrangement with the Stones' opening act, Sheryl Crow-on stage, both modeled items from Tommy's newly launched "Rock 'n' Roll Collection."

It wasn't until January 1999, however-when Hilfiger launched the ad campaign for the Stones' No Security Tour-that full brand-culture integration was achieved. In the ads, young, glowing Tommy models were pictured in full-page frame "watching" a Rolling Stones concert taking place on the opposite page. The photographs of the band members were a quarter of the size of those of the models. In some of the ads, the Stones were nowhere to be found and the Tommy models alone were seen posing with their own guitars. In all cases, the ads featured a hybrid logo of the Stones' famous red tongue over Tommy's trademarked red-white-and-blue flag. The tagline was "Tommy Hilfiger Presents the Rolling Stones No Security Tour"-though there were no dates or locations for any tour stops, only the addresses of flagship Tommy stores.

In other words, this wasn't rock sponsorship, it was "live-action advertising," as media consultant Michael J. Wolf describes the ads.14 It's clear from the campaign's design that Hilfiger isn't interested in buying a piece of someone else's act, even if they are the Rolling Stones. The act is a background set, powerfully showcasing the true rock-and-roll essence of the Tommy brand; just one piece of Hilfiger's larger project of carving out a place in the music world, not as a sponsor but as a player-much as Nike has achieved in the sports world. It's clear from the campaign's design that Hilfiger isn't interested in buying a piece of someone else's act, even if they are the Rolling Stones. The act is a background set, powerfully showcasing the true rock-and-roll essence of the Tommy brand; just one piece of Hilfiger's larger project of carving out a place in the music world, not as a sponsor but as a player-much as Nike has achieved in the sports world.

The Hilfiger/Stones branding is only the highest-profile example of the new relationship between bands and sponsors that is sweeping the music industry. For instance, it was a short step for Volkswagen-after using cutting-edge electronic music in its ads for the new Beetle-to launch DriversFest '99, a VW branded music festival in Long Island, New York. DriversFest competes for ticket sales with the Mentos Freshmaker Tour, a two-year-old traveling music festival owned and branded by a breath-mint manufacturer-on the Mentos Web site, visitors are invited to vote for which bands they want to play the venue. As with the Absolut Kelly Web site and the Altoids' Curiously Strong art exhibition, these are not sponsored events: the brand is the event's infrastructure; the artists are its filler, a reversal in the power dynamic that makes any discussion of the need to protect unmarketed artistic s.p.a.ce appear hopelessly naive.

This emerging dynamic is clearest in the branded festivals being developed by the large beer companies. Instead of merely playing in beer ads, as they likely would have in the eighties, acts like Hole, Soundgarden, David Bowie and the Chemical Brothers now play beer-company gigs. Molson Breweries, which owns 50 percent of Canada's only national concert promoter, Universal Concerts, already has its name promoted almost every time a rock or pop star gets up on stage in Canada-either through its Molson Canadian Rocks promotional arm or its myriad venues: Molson Stage, Molson Park, Molson Amphitheatre. For the first decade or so, this was a fine arrangement, but by the mid-nineties, Molson was tired of being upstaged. Rock stars had an annoying tendency to hog the spotlight and, worse, sometimes they even insulted their sponsors from the stage.

Clearly fed up, in 1996 Molson held its first Blind Date Concert. The concept, which has since been exported to the U.S. by sister company Miller Beer, is simple: hold a contest in which winners get to attend an exclusive concert staged by Molson and Miller in a small club-much smaller than the venues where one would otherwise see these megastars. And here's the clincher: keep the name of the band secret until it steps on stage. Antic.i.p.ation mounts about the concert (helped along by national ad campaigns building up said antic.i.p.ation), but the name on everyone's lips isn't David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Soundgarden, INXS or any of the other bands that have played the Dates, it's Molson and Miller. No one, after all, knows who is going to play, but they know who is putting on the show. With Blind Date, Molson and Miller invented a way to equate their brands with extremely popular musicians, while still maintaining their compet.i.tive edge over the stars. "In a funny way," says Universal Concerts' Steve Herman, "the beer is bigger than the band."15 The rock stars, turned into high-priced hired guns at Molson's bar mitzvah party, continued to find sad little ways to rebel. Almost every musician who played a Blind Date acted out: Courtney Love told a reporter, "G.o.d bless Molson.... I douche with it."16 The s.e.x Pistols' Johnny Lydon screamed "Thank you for the money" from the stage, and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell told the crowd, "Yeah, we're here because of some f.u.c.king beer company...Labatt's." But the tantrums were all incidental to the main event, in which Molson and Miller were the real rock stars and it didn't really matter how those petulant rent-a-bands behaved. The s.e.x Pistols' Johnny Lydon screamed "Thank you for the money" from the stage, and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell told the crowd, "Yeah, we're here because of some f.u.c.king beer company...Labatt's." But the tantrums were all incidental to the main event, in which Molson and Miller were the real rock stars and it didn't really matter how those petulant rent-a-bands behaved.

Jack Rooney, Miller's vice president of marketing, explains that his $200 million promotion budget goes toward devising creative new ways to distinguish the Miller brand from the plethora of other brands in the marketplace. "We're competing not just against Coors and Corona," he says, "but c.o.ke, Nike and Microsoft."17 Only he isn't telling the whole story. In Only he isn't telling the whole story. In Advertising Age's Advertising Age's annual "Top Marketing 100" list of 1997's best brands there was a new arrival: the Spice Girls (fittingly enough, since Posh Spice did once tell a reporter, "We wanted to be a 'household name'. Like Ajax." annual "Top Marketing 100" list of 1997's best brands there was a new arrival: the Spice Girls (fittingly enough, since Posh Spice did once tell a reporter, "We wanted to be a 'household name'. Like Ajax."18) And the Spice Girls ranked number six in Forbes Forbes magazine's inaugural "Celebrity Power 100," in May 1999, a new ranking based not on fame or fortune but on stars' brand "franchise." The list was a watershed moment in corporate history, marking the fact that, as Michael J. Wolf says, "Brands and stars have become the same thing." magazine's inaugural "Celebrity Power 100," in May 1999, a new ranking based not on fame or fortune but on stars' brand "franchise." The list was a watershed moment in corporate history, marking the fact that, as Michael J. Wolf says, "Brands and stars have become the same thing."19 But when brands and stars are the same thing, they are also, at times, compet.i.tors in the high-stakes tussle for brand awareness, a fact more consumer companies have become ready to admit. Canadian clothing company Club Monaco, for instance, has never used celebrities in its campaigns. "We've thought about it," says vice president Christine Ralphs, "but whenever we go there, it always becomes more about the personality than the brand, and for us, we're just not willing to share that."20 There is good reason to be protective: though more and more clothing and candy companies seem intent on turning musicians into their opening acts, bands and their record labels are launching their own challenges to this demoted status. After seeing the enormous profits that the Gap and Tommy Hilfiger have made through their a.s.sociation with the music world, record labels are barreling into the branding business themselves. Not only are they placing highly sophisticated cross-branding apparatus behind working musicians, but bands are increasingly being conceived-and test-marketed-as brands first: the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys, N' Sync, All Saints and so on. Prefab bands aren't new to the music industry, and neither are bands with their own merchandising lines, but the phenomenon has never dominated pop culture as it has at the end of the nineties, and musicians have never before competed so aggressively with consumer brands. Sean "Puffy" Combs has leveraged his celebrity as a rapper and record producer into a magazine, several restaurants, a clothing label and a line of frozen foods. And Raekwon, of the rap group Wu-Tang Clan, explains that "the music, movies, the clothing, it is all part of the pie we're making. In the year 2005 we might have Wu-Tang furniture for sale at Nordstrom."21 Whether it's the Gap or Wu-Tang Clan, the only remaining relevant question in the sponsorship debate seems to be, Where do you have the guts to draw the borders around your brand? Whether it's the Gap or Wu-Tang Clan, the only remaining relevant question in the sponsorship debate seems to be, Where do you have the guts to draw the borders around your brand?

Nike and the Branding of Sports Inevitably, any discussion about branded celebrity leads to the same place: Michael Jordan, the man who occupies the number-one spot on all of those ranking lists, who has incorporated himself into the JORDAN brand, whose agent coined the term "superbrand" to describe him. But no discussion of Michael Jordan's brand potential can begin without the brand that branded him: Nike.

Nike has successfully upstaged sports on a scale that makes the breweries' rock-star aspirations look like amateur night. Now of course pro sports, like big-label music, is in essence a profit-driven enterprise, which is why the Nike story has less to teach us about the loss of unmarketed s.p.a.ce-s.p.a.ce that, arguably, never even existed in this context-than it does about the mechanics of branding and its powers of eclipse. A company that swallows cultural s.p.a.ce in giant gulps, Nike is the definitive story of the transcendent nineties superbrand, and more than any other single company, its actions demonstrate how branding seeks to erase all boundaries between the sponsor and the sponsored. This is a shoe company that is determined to unseat pro sports, the Olympics and even star athletes, to become the very definition of sports itself.

Nike CEO Phil Knight started selling running shoes in the sixties, but he didn't strike it rich until high-tech sneakers became the must-have accessory of America's jogging craze. But when jogging subsided in the mid-eighties and Reebok cornered the market on trendy aerobics shoes, Nike was left with a product destined for the great dustbin of yuppie fads. Rather than simply switching to a different kind of sneaker, Knight decided that running shoes should become peripheral in a reincarnated Nike. Leave sneakers to Reebok and Adidas-Nike would transform itself into what Knight calls "the world's best sports and fitness company."22 The corporate mythology has it that Nike is a sports and fitness company because it was built by a bunch of jocks who loved sports and were fanatically devoted to the worship of superior athletes. In reality, Nike's project was a little more complicated and can be separated into three guiding principles. First, turn a select group of athletes into Hollywood-style superstars who are a.s.sociated not with their teams or even, at times, with their sport, but instead with certain pure ideas about athleticism as transcendence and perseverance-embodiments of the Graeco-Roman ideal of the perfect male form. Second, pit Nike's "Pure Sports" and its team of athletic superstars against the rule-obsessed established sporting world. Third, and most important, brand like mad.

Step 1: Create Sport Celebrities It was Michael Jordan's extraordinary basketball skill that catapulted Nike to branded heaven, but it was Nike's commercials that made Jordan a global superstar. It's true that gifted athletes like Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali were celebrities before Nike's time, but they never reached Jordan's otherworldly level of fame. That stratum was reserved for movie and pop stars, who had been transformed by the special effects, art direction and careful cinematography of films and music videos. Sport stars pre-Nike, no matter how talented or worshiped, were still stuck on the ground. Football, hockey and baseball may have been ubiquitous on television, but televised sports were just real-time play-by-plays, which were often tedious, sometimes exciting and high tech only in the slow-mo replay. As for athletes endorsing products, their advertis.e.m.e.nts and commercials couldn't quite be described as cutting-edge star creation-whether it was Wilt Chamberlain goofily grinning from a box of Wheaties or Rocket Richard being sentenced to "two minutes for looking so good" in Grecian Formula commercials.

I wake up every morning, jump in the shower, look down at the symbol, and that pumps me up for the day. It's to remind me every day what I have to do, which is, "Just Do It."-Twenty-four-year-old Internet entrepreneur Carmine Collettion on his decision to get a Nike swoosh tattooed on his navel, December 1997 Nike's 1985 TV spots for Michael Jordan brought sports into the entertainment world: the freeze frame, the close-up and the quick cuts that allowed Jordan to appear to be suspended in mid-jump, providing the stunning illusion that he could actually take flight. The idea of harnessing sport-shoe technology to create a superior being-of Michael Jordan flying through the air in suspended animation-was Nike mythmaking at work. These commercials were the first rock videos about sports and they created something entirely new. As Michael Jordan says, "What Phil [Knight] and Nike have done is turn me into a dream."23 Many of Nike's most famous TV commercials have used Nike superstars to convey the idea idea of sports, as opposed to simply representing the best of the athlete's own team sport. Spots often feature famous athletes playing a game other than the one they play professionally, such as tennis pro Andre Aga.s.si showing off his version of "rock-and-roll golf." And then there was the breakthrough "Bo Knows" campaign, which lifted baseball and football player Bo Jackson out of his two professional sports and presented him instead as the perfect all-around cross-trainer. A series of quick-cut interviews with Nike stars-McEnroe, Jordan, Gretzky-ironically suggested that Jackson knew their sports better than they did. "Bo knows tennis," "Bo knows basketball" and so on. of sports, as opposed to simply representing the best of the athlete's own team sport. Spots often feature famous athletes playing a game other than the one they play professionally, such as tennis pro Andre Aga.s.si showing off his version of "rock-and-roll golf." And then there was the breakthrough "Bo Knows" campaign, which lifted baseball and football player Bo Jackson out of his two professional sports and presented him instead as the perfect all-around cross-trainer. A series of quick-cut interviews with Nike stars-McEnroe, Jordan, Gretzky-ironically suggested that Jackson knew their sports better than they did. "Bo knows tennis," "Bo knows basketball" and so on.

At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Nike took this strategy out of the controlled environment of its TV commercials and applied it to a real sports compet.i.tion. The experiment started in 1995 when Nike's marketing department dreamed up the idea of turning a couple of Kenyan runners into Africa's first Olympic ski team. As Mark Bossardet, Nike's director of global athletics, explained, "We were sitting around the office one day and we said, 'What if we took Kenyan runners and transferred their skills to cross-country skiing?'"24 Kenyan runners, who have dominated cross-country track-and-field compet.i.tions at the Olympics since 1968, have always represented the "idea of sports" at Nike headquarters. ("Where's the Kenyans running?" Phil Knight has been heard to demand after viewing a Nike ad deemed insufficiently inspiring and heroic. In Nike shorthand it means, "Where's the Spirit of Sports?"). Kenyan runners, who have dominated cross-country track-and-field compet.i.tions at the Olympics since 1968, have always represented the "idea of sports" at Nike headquarters. ("Where's the Kenyans running?" Phil Knight has been heard to demand after viewing a Nike ad deemed insufficiently inspiring and heroic. In Nike shorthand it means, "Where's the Spirit of Sports?").25 So according to Nike marketing logic, if two Kenyan runners-living specimens of sports incarnate-were plucked out of their own sport and out of their country and their native climate, and dumped on a frozen mountaintop, and if they were then able to transfer their agility, strength and endurance to cross-country skiing, their success would represent a moment of pure sporting transcendence. It would be a spiritual transformation of Man over nature, birthright, nation and petty sports bureaucrats-brought to the world by Nike, of course. "Nike always felt sports shouldn't have boundaries," the swooshed press release announced. Finally there would be proof. So according to Nike marketing logic, if two Kenyan runners-living specimens of sports incarnate-were plucked out of their own sport and out of their country and their native climate, and dumped on a frozen mountaintop, and if they were then able to transfer their agility, strength and endurance to cross-country skiing, their success would represent a moment of pure sporting transcendence. It would be a spiritual transformation of Man over nature, birthright, nation and petty sports bureaucrats-brought to the world by Nike, of course. "Nike always felt sports shouldn't have boundaries," the swooshed press release announced. Finally there would be proof.

And if nothing else, Nike would get its name in lots of quirky human-interest sidebar stories-just like the wacky Jamaican bobsled team that hogged the headlines at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. What sports reporter could resist the heart-warmer of Africa's first ski team?

Nike found its test-tube subjects in two mid-level runners, Philip Boit and Henry Bitok. Since Kenya has no snow, no ski federation and no training facilities, Nike financed the entire extravagant affair, dishing out $250,000 for training in Finland and custom-designed uniforms, and paying the runners a salary to live away from their families. When Nagano rolled around, Bitok didn't qualify and Boit finished last-a full twenty minutes after the goldmedal winner, Bjorn Daehlie of Norway. It turns out that cross-country running and cross-country skiing-despite the similarity of their names-require entirely different sets of skills and use different muscles.

But that was beside the point. Before the race began, Nike held a press conference at its Olympic headquarters, catered the event with Kenyan food and beer and showed reporters a video of the Kenyans encountering snow for the first time, skiing into bushes and falling on their b.u.t.ts. The journalists also heard accounts of how the climate change was so dramatic that the Kenyans' skin cracked and their fingernails and toenails fell off, but "now," as Boit said, "I love snow. Without snow, I could not do my sport." As the Tampa Tribune Tampa Tribune of February 12, 1998, put it, "They're just two kooky Kenyans trying to make it in the frozen tundra." of February 12, 1998, put it, "They're just two kooky Kenyans trying to make it in the frozen tundra."

It was quintessential Nike branding: by equating the company with athletes and athleticism at such a primal level, Nike ceased merely to clothe the game and started to play it. And once Nike was in the game with its athletes, it could have fanatical sports fans instead of customers.

Step 2: Destroy the Compet.i.tion Like any compet.i.tive sports player, Nike has its work cut out for it: winning. But winning for Nike is about much more than sneaker wars. Of course Nike can't stand Adidas, Fila and Reebok, but more important, Phil Knight has sparred with sports agents, whose individual greed, he claims, puts them "inherently in conflict with the interests of athletes at every turn"26 the NBA, which he feels has unfairly piggybacked on Nike's star-creation machinery; the NBA, which he feels has unfairly piggybacked on Nike's star-creation machinery;27 and the International Olympic Committee, whose elitism and corruption Knight derided long before the organization's 1999 bribery scandals. and the International Olympic Committee, whose elitism and corruption Knight derided long before the organization's 1999 bribery scandals.28 In Nike's world, all of the official sports clubs, a.s.sociations and committees are actually trampling the spirit of sports-a spirit Nike alone truly embodies and appreciates. In Nike's world, all of the official sports clubs, a.s.sociations and committees are actually trampling the spirit of sports-a spirit Nike alone truly embodies and appreciates.

So at the same time as Nike's myth machine was fabricating the idea of Team Nike, Nike's corporate team was dreaming up ways to play a more central role in pro sports. First Nike tried to unseat the sports agents by starting an agency of its own, not only to represent athletes in contract negotiation but also to develop integrated marketing strategies for its clients that are sure to complement-not dilute-Nike's own branding strategy, often by pushing its own ad concepts on other companies.

Then there was a failed attempt to create-and own-a college football version of the Super Bowl (the Nike Bowl), and in 1992, Nike did buy the Ben Hogan golf tour and rename it the Nike Tour. "We do these things to be in the sport. We're in sports-that's what we do," Knight told reporters at the time.29 That is certainly what they did when Nike and rival Adidas made up their own sporting event to settle a grudge match over who could claim the t.i.tle "fastest man alive" in their ads: Nike's Michael Johnson or Adidas's Donovan Bailey. Because the two compete in different categories (Bailey in the 100-meter, Johnson in the 200), the sneaker brands agreed to split the difference and had the men compete in a made-up 150-meter race. Adidas won. That is certainly what they did when Nike and rival Adidas made up their own sporting event to settle a grudge match over who could claim the t.i.tle "fastest man alive" in their ads: Nike's Michael Johnson or Adidas's Donovan Bailey. Because the two compete in different categories (Bailey in the 100-meter, Johnson in the 200), the sneaker brands agreed to split the difference and had the men compete in a made-up 150-meter race. Adidas won.

When Phil Knight faces the inevitable criticism from sports purists that he is having an undue influence on the games he sponsors, his stock response is that "the athlete remains our reason for being."30 But as the company's encounter with star basketball player Shaquille O'Neal shows, Nike is only devoted to a certain kind of athlete. Company biographer Donald Katz describes the tense meeting between O'Neal's manager, Leonard Armato, and Nike's marketing team: But as the company's encounter with star basketball player Shaquille O'Neal shows, Nike is only devoted to a certain kind of athlete. Company biographer Donald Katz describes the tense meeting between O'Neal's manager, Leonard Armato, and Nike's marketing team: Shaq had observed the explosion of the sports-marketing scene ("He took sports-marketing courses," Armato says) and the rise of Michael Jordan, and he'd decided that rather than becoming a part of several varied corporate marketing strategies, an array of companies might be a.s.sembled as part of a brand presence that was he. Consumer products companies would become part of Team Shaq, rather than the other way around. "We're looking for consistency of image," Armato would say as he began collecting the team on Shaq's behalf. "Like Mickey Mouse."

The only problem was that at Nike headquarters, there is no Team Shaq, only Team Nike. Nike took a pa.s.s and handed over the player many thought would be the next Michael Jordan to Reebok-not "Nike material," they said. According to Katz, Knight's mission "from the beginning had been to build a pedestal for sports such as the world had never seen."31 But at Nike Town in Manhattan, the pedestal is not holding up Michael Jordan, or the sport of basketball, but a rotating Nike sneaker. Like a prima donna, it sits in the spotlight, the first celebrity shoe. But at Nike Town in Manhattan, the pedestal is not holding up Michael Jordan, or the sport of basketball, but a rotating Nike sneaker. Like a prima donna, it sits in the spotlight, the first celebrity shoe.

Step 3: Sell Pieces of the Brand As If It Was the Berlin Wall Nothing embodies the era of the brand like Nike Town, the company's chain of flagship retail outlets. Each one is a shrine, a place set apart for the faithful, a mausoleum. The Manhattan Nike Town on East Fifty-seventh Street is more than a fancy store fitted with the requisite brushed chrome and blond wood, it is a temple, where the swoosh is worshiped as both art and heroic symbol. The swoosh is equated with Sports at every turn: in reverent gla.s.s display cases depicting "The definition of an athlete" in the inspirational quotes about "Courage," "Honor," "Victory" and "Teamwork" inlaid in the floorboards; and in the building's dedication "to all athletes and their dreams."

I asked a salesperson if there was anything amid the thousands of T-shirts, bathing suits, sports bras or socks that did not have a Nike logo on the outside of the garment. He racked his brain. T-shirts, no. Shoes, no. Track suits? No.

"Why?" he finally asked, sounding a bit hurt. "Is somebody allergic to the swoosh?"

Nike, king of the superbrands, is like an inflated Pac-Man, so driven to consume it does so not out of malice but out of jaw-clenching reflex. It is ravenous by nature. It seems fitting that Nike's branding strategy involves an icon that looks like a check mark. Nike is checking off the s.p.a.ces as it swallows them: superstores? Check. Hockey? Baseball? Soccer? Check. Check. Check. T-shirts? Check. Hats? Check. Underwear? Check. Schools? Bathrooms? Shaved into brush cuts? Check. Check. Check. Since Nike has been the leader in branding clothing, it's not surprising that it has also led the way to the brand's final frontier: the branding of flesh. Not only do dozens of Nike employees have a swoosh tattooed on their calves, but tattoo parlors all over North America report that the swoosh has become their most popular item. Human branding? Check.

The Branded Star There is another reason behind Nike's stunning success at disseminating its brand. The superstar athletes who form the building blocks of its image-those creatures invented by Nike and cloned by Adidas and Fila-have proved uniquely positioned to soar in the era of synergy: they are made to be cross-promoted. The Spice Girls can make movies, and film stars can walk the runways but neither can quite win an Olympic medal. It's more practical for Dennis Rodman to write two books, star in two movies and have his own television show than it is for Martin Amis or Seinfeld to play defense for the Bulls, just as it is easier for Shaquille O'Neal to put out a rap alb.u.m than it is for Sporty Spice to make the NBA draft. Only animated characters-another synergy favorite-are more versatile than sports stars in the synergy game.

But for Nike, there is a downside to the power of its own celebrity endorsers. Though Phil Knight will never admit it, Nike is no longer just competing with Reebok, Adidas and the NBA; it has also begun to compete with another brand: its name is Michael Jordan.

In the three years before he retired, Jordan was easing away from his persona as Nike incarnate and turning himself into what his agent, David Falk, calls a "superbrand." He refused to go along when Nike entered the sportsagent business, telling the company that it would have to compensate him for millions of dollars in lost revenue. Instead of letting Nike manage his endors.e.m.e.nt portfolio, he tried to build synergy deals between his various sponsors, including a bizarre attempt to persuade Nike to switch phone companies when he became a celebrity spokesperson for WorldCom.32 Other highlights of what Falk terms "Michael Jordan's Corporate Partnership Program" include a WorldCom commercial in which the actors are decked out in Oakley sungla.s.ses and Wilson sports gear, both Jordan-endorsed products. And, of course, the movie Other highlights of what Falk terms "Michael Jordan's Corporate Partnership Program" include a WorldCom commercial in which the actors are decked out in Oakley sungla.s.ses and Wilson sports gear, both Jordan-endorsed products. And, of course, the movie s.p.a.ce Jam s.p.a.ce Jam-in which the basketball player starred and which Falk executive-produced-was Jordan's coming-out party as his own brand. The movie incorporated plugs for each of Jordan's sponsors (choice dialogue includes "Michael, it's show time. Get your Hanes on, lace up your Nikes, grab your Wheaties and Gatorade and we'll pick up a Big Mac on the way!"), and McDonald's promoted the event with s.p.a.ce Jam s.p.a.ce Jam toys and Happy Meals. toys and Happy Meals.

Nike had been playing up Jordan's business ambitions in its "CEO Jordan" commercials, which show him changing into a suit and racing to his office at halftime. But behind the scenes, the company has always resented Jordan's extra-Nike activities. Donald Katz writes that as early as 1992, "Knight believed that Michael Jordan was no longer, in sports-marketing nomenclature, 'clean.'"33 Significantly, Nike boycotted the co-branding bonanza that surrounded Significantly, Nike boycotted the co-branding bonanza that surrounded s.p.a.ce Jam s.p.a.ce Jam. Unlike McDonald's, it didn't use the movie in tie-in commercials, despite the fact that s.p.a.ce Jam s.p.a.ce Jam is based on a series of Nike commercials featuring Jordan and Bugs Bunny. When Falk told is based on a series of Nike commercials featuring Jordan and Bugs Bunny. When Falk told Advertising Age Advertising Age that "Nike had some reservations about the implementation of the movie," that "Nike had some reservations about the implementation of the movie,"34 he was exercising considerable restraint. Jim Riswold, the longtime Nike adman who first conceived of pairing Jordan with Bugs Bunny in the shoe commercials, complained to he was exercising considerable restraint. Jim Riswold, the longtime Nike adman who first conceived of pairing Jordan with Bugs Bunny in the shoe commercials, complained to The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal that that s.p.a.ce Jam s.p.a.ce Jam "is a merchandising bonanza first and a movie second. The idea is to sell lots of product." "is a merchandising bonanza first and a movie second. The idea is to sell lots of product."35 It was a historic moment in the branding of culture, completely inverting the traditionally fraught relationship between art and commerce: a shoe company and an ad agency huffing and puffing that a Hollywood movie would sully the purity of their commercials. It was a historic moment in the branding of culture, completely inverting the traditionally fraught relationship between art and commerce: a shoe company and an ad agency huffing and puffing that a Hollywood movie would sully the purity of their commercials.

For the time being at least, a peace has descended between the warring superbrands. Nike has given Jordan more leeway to develop his own apparel brand, still within the Nike empire but with greater independence. In the same week that he retired from basketball, Jordan announced that he would be extending the JORDAN clothing line from basketball gear into lifestyle wear, competing directly with Polo, Hilfiger and Nautica. Settling into his role as CEO-as opposed to celebrity endorser-he signed up other pro athletes to endorse the JORDAN brand: Derek Jeter, a shortstop for the New York Yankees and boxer Roy Jones Jr. And, as of May 1999, the full JORDAN brand is showcased in its own "retail concept shops"-two in New York and one in Chicago, with plans for up to fifty outlets by the end of the year 2000. Jordan finally had his wish: to be his own free-standing brand, complete with celebrity endorsers.

The Age of the Brandasaurus On the surface, the power plays between millionaire athletes and billion-dollar companies would seem to have little to do with the loss of unmarketed s.p.a.ce that is the subject of this section. Jordan and Nike, however, are only the most broad strokes, manifestations of the way in which the branding imperative changes the way we imagine both sponsor and sponsored to the extent that the idea of unbranded s.p.a.ce-music that is distinct from khakis, festivals that are not extensions of beer brands, athletic achievement that is celebrated in and of itself-becomes almost unthinkable. Jordan and Nike are emblematic of a new paradigm that eliminates all barriers between branding and culture, leaving no room whatsoever for unmarketed s.p.a.ce.

An understanding is beginning to emerge that fashion designers, running-shoe companies, media outlets, cartoon characters and celebrities of all kinds are all more or less in the same business: the business of marketing their brands. That's why in the early nineties, Creative Artists Agency, the most powerful celebrity agency in Hollywood, began to represent not just celebrity people, but celebrity brands: c.o.ke, Apple and even an alliance with Nike. That's why Benetton, Microsoft and Starbucks have leapfrogged over the "magalog" trend and have gone full force into the magazine publishing business: Benetton with Colors Colors, Microsoft with the on-line zine Slate Slate and Starbucks with and Starbucks with Joe Joe, a joint venture with Time Inc. That's why teen sensation Britney Spears and sitcom character Ally McBeal each have their own line of designer clothing; why Tommy Hilfiger has helped launch a record label; and rapper Master P has his own sports agency business. It's also why Ralph Lauren has a line of designer household paints, Brooks Brothers has a line of wines, Nike is set to launch a swooshed cruise ship, and auto-parts giant Magna is opening up an amus.e.m.e.nt park. It is also why market consultant Faith Popcorn has launched her own brand of leather Coc.o.o.ning armchairs, named after the trend she coined of the same name, and Fashion Licensing of America Inc. is marketing a line of Ernest Hemingway furniture, designed to capture the "brand personality" of the late writer.36 As manufacturers and entertainers swap roles and move together toward the creation of branded lifestyle bubbles, Nike executives predict that their "compet.i.tion in the future [will] be Disney, not Reebok."37 And it seems only fitting that just as Nike enters the entertainment business, the entertainment giants have decided to try their hand at the sneaker industry. In October 1997, Warner Brothers launched a low-end basketball shoe, endorsed by Shaquille O'Neal. "It's an extension of what we do at retail," explained Dan Romanelli of Warner Consumer products. And it seems only fitting that just as Nike enters the entertainment business, the entertainment giants have decided to try their hand at the sneaker industry. In October 1997, Warner Brothers launched a low-end basketball shoe, endorsed by Shaquille O'Neal. "It's an extension of what we do at retail," explained Dan Romanelli of Warner Consumer products.

It seems that wherever individual brands began-in shoes, sports, retail, food, music or cartoons-the most successful among them have all landed in the same place: the stratosphere of the superbrand. That is where Mick Jagger struts in Tommy Hilfiger, Steven Spielberg and c.o.ke have the same agent, Shaq wants to be "like Mickey Mouse," and everyone has his or her own branded restaurant-from Jordan to Disney to Demi Moore to Puffy Combs and the supermodels.

It was Michael Ovitz, of course, who came up with the blueprint for the highest temple of branding so far, one that would do for music, sports and fashion what Walt Disney long ago did for kids' cartoons: turn the slick world of television into a real-world branded environment. After leaving Creative Artists Agency in August 1995 and being driven out as president of Disney shortly after, Ovitz took his unprecedented $87 million golden handshake and launched a new venture: entertainment- and sports-themed megamalls, a synthesis of pro sports, Hollywood celebrity and shopping. His vision is of an unholy mixture of Nike Town, Planet Hollywood and the NBA's marketing wing-all leading straight to the cash register. The first venture, a 1.5-million-square-foot theme mall in Columbus, Ohio, is scheduled to open in the year 2000. If Ovitz gets his way, another mall, planned for the Los Angeles area, will include an NFL football stadium.

As these edifices of the future suggest, corporate sponsors and the culture they brand have fused together to create a third culture: a self-enclosed universe of brand-name people, brand-name products and brand-name media. Interestingly, a 1995 study conducted by University of Missouri professor Roy F. Fox shows that many kids grasp the unique ambiguities of this sphere intuitively. The study found that a majority of Missouri high-school students who watched Channel One's mix of news and ads in their cla.s.srooms thought that sports stars paid shoe companies to be in their commercials. "I don't know why athletes do that-pay all that money for all them ignorant commercials for themselves. Guess it makes everyone like 'em more and like their teams more."38 So opined Debbie, a ninth-grader and one of the two hundred students who partic.i.p.ated in the study. For Fox, the comment demonstrates a disturbing lack of media literacy, proof positive that kids can't critically evaluate the advertising they see on television. But perhaps these findings show that kids understand something most of us still refuse to grasp. Maybe they know that sponsorship is a far more complicated process than the buyer/seller dichotomy that existed in previous decades and that to talk of who sold out or bought in has become impossibly anachronistic. In an era in which people are brands and brands are culture, what Nike and Michael Jordan do is more akin to co-branding than straight-up shilling, and while the Spice Girls may be doing Pepsi today, they could easily launch their own Spice Cola tomorrow.

It makes a good deal of sense that high-school kids would have a more realistic grasp of the absurdities of branded life. They, after all, are the ones who grew up sold.

Virgin's Richard Branson, the rock-and-roll CEO. Revolution Soda Co.'s consumable Che.

Chapter Three.

Alt. Everything The Youth Market and the Marketing of Cool It's terrible to say, very often the most exciting outfits are from the poorest people.

-Designer Christian Lacroix in Vogue Vogue, April 1994 In our final year of high school, my best friend, Lan Ying, and I pa.s.sed the time with morbid discussions about the meaninglessness of life when everything had already been done. The world stretched out before us not as a slate of possibility, but as a maze of well-worn grooves like the ridges burrowed by insects in hardwood. Step off the straight and narrow career-and-materialism groove and you just end up on another one-the groove for people who step off the main groove. And that groove was worn indeed (some of the grooving done by our own parents). Want to go traveling? Be a modern-day Kerouac? Hop on the Let's Go Europe groove. How about a rebel? An avant-garde artist? Go buy your alterna-groove at the secondhand bookstore, dusty and moth-eaten and done to death. Everywhere we imagined ourselves standing turned into a cliche beneath our feet-the stuff of Jeep ad copy and sketch comedy. To us it seemed as though the archetypes were all hackneyed by the time our turn came to graduate, including that of the black-clad deflated intellectual, which we were trying on at that very moment. Crowded by the ideas and styles of the past, we felt there was no open s.p.a.ce anywhere.

Of course it's a cla.s.sic symptom of teenage narcissism to believe that the end of history coincides exactly with your arrival on earth. Almost every angst-ridden, Camus-reading seventeen-year-old girl finds her own groove eventually. Still, there is a part of my high-school globo-claustrophobia that has never left me, and in some ways only seems to intensify as time creeps along. What haunts me is not exactly the absence of literal s.p.a.ce so much as a deep craving for metaphorical s.p.a.ce: release, escape, some kind of open-ended freedom.

All my parents wanted was the open road and a VW camper. That was enough escape for them. The ocean, the night sky, some acoustic guitar...what more could you ask? Well, actually, you could ask to go soaring off the side of a mountain on a s...o...b..ard, feeling as if, for one moment, you are riding the clouds instead of the snow. You could scour Southeast Asia, like the world-weary twenty-somethings in Alex Garland's novel The Beach The Beach, looking for the one corner of the globe uncharted by the Lonely Planet to start your own private utopia. You could, for that matter, join a New Age cult and dream of alien abduction. From the occult to raves to riots to extreme sports, it seems that the eternal urge for escape has never enjoyed such niche marketing.

In the absence of s.p.a.ce travel and confined by the laws of gravity, however, most of us take our open s.p.a.ce where we can get it, sneaking it like cigarettes, outside hulking enclosures. The streets may be lined with billboards and franchise signs, but kids still make do, throwing up a couple of nets and pa.s.sing the puck or soccer ball between the cars. There is release, too, at England's free music festivals, and in conversions of untended private property into collective s.p.a.ce: abandoned factories turned into squats by street kids or ramped entrances to office towers transformed into skateboarding courses on Sunday afternoons.

But as privatization slithers into every crevice of public life, even these intervals of freedom and back alleys of unsponsored s.p.a.ce are slipping away. The indie skateboarders and s...o...b..arders all have Vans sneaker contracts, road hockey is fodder for beer commercials, inner-city redevelopment projects are sponsored by Wells Fargo, and the free festivals have all been banned, replaced with the annual Tribal Gathering, an electronic music festival that bills itself as a "strike back against the establishment and clubland's evil empire of mediocrity, commercialism, and the creeping corporate capitalism of our cosmic counter-culture"1 and where the organizers regularly confiscate bottled water that has not been purchased on the premises, despite the fact that the number-one cause of death at raves is dehydration. and where the organizers regularly confiscate bottled water that has not been purchased on the premises, despite the fact that the number-one cause of death at raves is dehydration.

I remember the moment when it hit me that my frustrated craving for s.p.a.ce wasn't simply a result of the inevitable march of history, but of the fact that commercial co-optation was proceeding at a speed that would have been unimaginable to previous generations. I was watching the television coverage of the controversy surrounding Woodstock '94, the twenty-fifth-anniversary festival of the original Woodstock event. The baby-boomer pundits and aging rock stars postured about how the $2 cans of Woodstock Memorial Pepsi, festival key chains and on-site cash machines betrayed the anticommercial spirit of the original event and, incredibly, whined that the $3 commemorative condoms marked the end of "free love" (as if AIDS had been cooked up as a malicious affront to their nostalgia).

What struck me most was that the debate revolved entirely around the sanct.i.ty of the past, with no recognition of present-tense cultural challenges. Despite the fact that the anniversary festival was primarily marketed to teenagers and college students and showcased then-up-and-coming bands like Green Day, not a single commentator explored what this youth-culture "commodification" might mean to the young people who would actually be attending the event. Never mind about the offense to hippies decades after the fact; how does it feel to have your culture "sold out" now, as you are living it? The only mention that a new generation of young people even existed came when the organizers, confronted with charges from ex-hippies that they had engineered Greedstock or Woodshlock, explained that if the event wasn't shrink-wrapped and synergized, the kids today would mutiny. Woodstock promoter John Roberts explained that today's youth are "used to sponsorship. If a kid went to a concert and there wasn't merchandise to buy, he'd probably go out of his mind."2 Roberts isn't the only one who holds this view. Advertising Age Advertising Age reporter Jeff Jensen goes so far as to make the claim that for today's young people, "Selling out is not only accepted, it's considered hip." reporter Jeff Jensen goes so far as to make the claim that for today's young people, "Selling out is not only accepted, it's considered hip."3 To object would be, well, unhip. There is no need to further romanticize the original Woodstock. Among (many) other things, it was also a big-label-backed rock festival, designed to turn a profit. Still, the myth of Woodstock as a sovereign youth-culture state was part of a vast project of generational self-definition-a concept that would have been wholly foreign to those in attendance at Woodstock '94, for whom generational ident.i.ty had largely been a prepackaged good and for whom the search for self had always been shaped by marketing hype, whether or not they believed it or defined themselves against it. This is a side effect of brand expansion that is far more difficult to track and quantify than the branding of culture and city s.p.a.ces. This loss of s.p.a.ce happens inside the individual; it is a colonization not of physical s.p.a.ce but of mental s.p.a.ce. To object would be, well, unhip. There is no need to further romanticize the original Woodstock. Among (many) other things, it was also a big-label-backed rock festival, designed to turn a profit. Still, the myth of Woodstock as a sovereign youth-culture state was part of a vast project of generational self-definition-a concept that would have been wholly foreign to those in attendance at Woodstock '94, for whom generational ident.i.ty had largely been a prepackaged good and for whom the search for self had always been shaped by marketing hype, whether or not they believed it or defined themselves against it. This is a side effect of brand expansion that is far more difficult to track and quantify than the branding of culture and city s.p.a.ces. This loss of s.p.a.ce happens inside the individual; it is a colonization not of physical s.p.a.ce but of mental s.p.a.ce.

In a climate of youth-marketing feeding frenzy, all culture begins to be created with the frenzy in mind. Much of youth culture becomes suspended in what sociologists Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson call "arrested development," noting that "we have, after all, no idea of what punk or grunge or hip hop as social and cultural movements might look like if they were not mined for their gold..."4 This "mining" has not gone unnoticed or unopposed. Both the anticorporate cultural journal This "mining" has not gone unnoticed or unopposed. Both the anticorporate cultural journal The Baffler The Baffler and the now-defunct and the now-defunct Might Might magazine brilliantly lampooned the desperation and striving of the youth-culture industry in the mid-nineties. Dozens, if not hundreds, of zines and Web sites have been launched and have played no small part in setting the mood for the kind of brand-based attacks that I chronicle in Part IV of this book. For the most part, however, branding's insatiable cultural thirst just creates more marketing. Marketing that thinks it is culture. magazine brilliantly lampooned the desperation and striving of the youth-culture industry in the mid-nineties. Dozens, if not hundreds, of zines and Web sites have been launched and have played no small part in setting the mood for the kind of brand-based attacks that I chronicle in Part IV of this book. For the most part, however, branding's insatiable cultural thirst just creates more marketing. Marketing that thinks it is culture.

To understand how youth culture became such a sought-after market in the early nineties, it helps to go back briefly to the recession era "brand crisis" that took root immediately preceding this frenzy-a crisis that, with so many consumers failing to live up to corporate expectations, created a clear and pressing need for a new cla.s.s of shoppers to step in and take over.

During the two decades before the brand crisis, the major cultural industries were still drinking deeply from the river of baby-boomer buying power, and the youth demographic found itself on the periphery, upstaged by the awesome power of cla.s.sic rock and reunion tours. Of course actual young consumers remained a concern for the industries that narrowly market to teens, but youth culture itself was regarded as a rather shallow and tepid well of inspiration by the entertainment and advertising industries. Sure, there were plenty of young people who considered their culture "alternative" or "underground" in the seventies and eighties. Every urban center maintained its bohemian pockets, where the faithful wrapped themselves in black, listened to the Grateful Dead or punk (or the more digestible New Wave), and shopped at secondhand clothing stores and in dank record stores. If they lived outside urban centers, tapes and accessories of the cool lifestyle could be ordered from the backs of magazines like Maximum Rock 'n' Roll Maximum Rock 'n' Roll, or swapped through networks of friends or purchased at concerts.

While this is a gross caricature of the youth subcultures that rose and fell during these decades, the relevant distinction is that these scenes were only halfheartedly sought after as markets. In part this was because seventies punk was at its peak at the same time as the infinitely more ma.s.s-marketable disco and heavy metal, and the gold mine of high-end preppy style. And while rap music was topping the charts by the mid-to late eighties, arriving complete with a fully articulated style and code, white America was not about to declare the arrival of a new youth culture. That day would have to wait a few years until the styles and sounds of urban black youth were fully co-opted by white suburbia.

Where I'm from there wasn't no scene I got my information reading Highlights Highlights magazine magazine-Princess Superstar, "I'm White," Strictly Platinum So there was no ma.s.s-marketing machine behind these subcultures: there was no Internet, no traveling alternative-culture shopping malls like Lollapalooza or Lilith Fair, and there certainly weren't slick catalogs like Delia and Airshop, which now deliver body glitter, plastic pants and big-city att.i.tude like pizzas to kids stuck in the suburbs. The industries that drove Western consumerism were still catering to the citizens of Woodstock Nation, now morphed into consumption-crazed yuppies. Most of their kids, too, could be counted on as yuppies-in-training, so keeping track of the trends and tastes favored by style-setting youth wasn't worth the effort.

The Youth Market Saves the Day All that changed in the early nineties when the baby boomers dropped their end of the consumer chain and the brands underwent their ident.i.ty crisis. At about the time of Marlboro Friday, Wall Street took a closer look at the brands that had flourished through the recession, and noticed something interesting. Among the industries that were holding steady or taking off were beer, soft drinks, fast food and sneakers sneakers-not to mention chewing gum and Barbie dolls. There was something else: 1992 was the first year since 1975 that the number of teenagers in America increased. Gradually, an idea began to dawn on many in the manufacturing sector and entertainment industries: maybe their sales were slumping not because consumers were "brand-blind," but because these companies had their eyes fixed on the wrong demographic prize. This was not a time for selling Tide and Snuggle to housewives-it was a time for beaming MTV, Nike, Hilfiger, Microsoft, Netscape and Wired Wired to global teens and their overgrown imitators. Their parents might have gone bargain bas.e.m.e.nt, but kids, it turned out, were still willing to pay up to fit in. Through this process, peer pressure emerged as a powerful market force, making the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses consumerism of their suburban parents pale by comparison. As clothing retailer Elise Decoteau said of her teen shoppers, "They run in packs. If you sell to one, you sell to everyone in their cla.s.s and everyone in their school." to global teens and their overgrown imitators. Their parents might have gone bargain bas.e.m.e.nt, but kids, it turned out, were still willing to pay up to fit in. Through this process, peer pressure emerged as a powerful market force, making the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses consumerism of their suburban parents pale by comparison. As clothing retailer Elise Decoteau said of her teen shoppers, "They run in packs. If you sell to one, you sell to everyone in their cla.s.s and everyone in their school."5 There was just one catch. As the success of branding superstars like Nike had shown, it was not going to be sufficient for companies simply to market their same products to a younger demographic; they needed to fashion brand ident.i.ties that would resonate with this new culture. If they were going to turn their lackl.u.s.ter products into transcendent meaning machines-as the dictates of branding demanded-they would need to remake themselves in the image of nineties cool: its music, styles and politics.

Cool Envy: The Brands Go Back to School Fueled by the dual promises of branding and the youth market, the corporate sector experienced a burst of creative energy. Cool, alternative, young, hip-whatever you want to call it-was the perfect ident.i.ty for product-driven companies looking to become transcendent image-based brands. Advertisers, brand managers, music, film and television producers raced back to high school, sucking up to the in-crowd in a frantic effort to isolate and reproduce in TV commercials the precise "att.i.tude" teens and twenty-somethings were driven to consume with their snack foods and pop tunes. And as in high schools everywhere, "Am I cool?" became the deeply dull and all-consuming question of every moment, echoing not only through cla.s.s and locker rooms, but through the high-powered meetings and conference calls of Corporate High.

The quest for cool is by nature riddled with self-doubt ("Is this cool?" one can hear the legions of teen shoppers nervously quizzing each other. "Do you think this is lame?") Except now the harrowing doubts of adolescence are the billion-dollar questions of our age. The insecurities go round and round the boardroom table, turning ad writers, art directors and CEOs into turbo-powered teenagers, circling in front of their bedroom mirrors trying to look blase. Do the kids think we're cool? they want to know. Are we trying too hard to be cool, or are we really cool? Do we have att.i.tude? The right right att.i.tude? att.i.tude?

The Wall Street Journal regularly runs serious articles about how the trend toward wide-legged jeans or miniature backpacks is affecting the stock market. IBM, out-cooled in the eighties by Apple, Microsoft and pretty well everybody, has become fixated on trying to impress the cool kids, or, in the company's lingo, the "People in Black." "We used to call them the ponytail brigade, the black turtleneck brigade," says IBM's David Gee, whose job it is to make Big Blue cool. "Now they're the PIBs-People in Black. We have to be relevant to the PIBs." regularly runs serious articles about how the trend toward wide-legged jeans or miniature backpacks is affecting the stock market. IBM, out-cooled in the eighties by Apple, Microsoft and pretty well everybody, has become fixated on trying to impress the cool kids, or, in the company's lingo, the "People in Black." "We used to call them the ponytail brigade, the black turtleneck brigade," says IBM's David Gee, whose job it is to make Big Blue cool. "Now they're the PIBs-People in Black. We have to be relevant to the PIBs."6 For Pepe Jeans, the goal, articulated by marketing director Phil Spur, is this: "They [the cool kids] have to look at your jeans, look at your brand image and say 'that's cool...' At the moment we're ensuring that Pepe is seen in the right places and on the right people." For Pepe Jeans, the goal, articulated by marketing director Phil Spur, is this: "They [the cool kids] have to look at your jeans, look at your brand image and say 'that's cool...' At the moment we're ensuring that Pepe is seen in the right places and on the right people."7 The companies that are left out of the crowd of successfully hip brands-their sneakers too small, their pant-legs too tapered, their edgy ads insufficiently ironic-now skulk on the margins of society: the corporate nerds. "Coolness is still elusive for us," says Bill Benford, president of L.A. Gear athletic wear,8 and one half expects him to slash his wrists like some anxious fifteen-year-old unable to face schoolyard exile for another term. No one is safe from this brutal ostracism, as Levi Strauss learned in 1998. The verdict was merciless: Levi's didn't have superstores like Disney, it didn't have cool ads like the Gap, it didn't have hip-hop credibility like Hilfiger and no one wanted to tattoo its logo on their navel, like Nike. In short, it wasn't cool. It had failed to understand, as its new brand developer Sean Dee diagnosed, that "loose jeans is not a fad, it's a paradigm shift." and one half expects him to slash his wrists like some anxious fifteen-year-old unable to face schoolyard exile for another term. No one is safe from this brutal ostracism, as Levi Strauss learned in 1998. The verdict was merciless: Levi's didn't have superstores like Disney, it didn't have cool ads like the Gap, it didn't have hip-hop credibility like Hilfiger and no one wanted to tattoo its logo on their navel, like Nike. In short, it wasn't cool. It had failed to understand, as its new brand developer Sean Dee diagnosed, that "loose jeans is not a fad, it's a paradigm shift."9 Cool, it seems, is the make-or-break quality in 1990s branding. It is the ironic sneer-track of ABC sitcoms and late-night talk shows; it is what sells psychedelic Internet servers, extreme sports gear, ironic watches, mind-blowing fruit juices, kitsch-laden jeans, postmodern sneakers and post-gender colognes. Our "aspirational age," as they say in marketing studies, is about seventeen. This applies equally to the forty-seven-year-old baby boomers scared of losing their cool and the seven-year-olds kick-boxing to the Backstreet Boys.

As the mission of corporate executives becomes to imbue their companies with deep coolness, one can even foresee a time when the mandate of our elected leaders will be "Make the Country Cool." In many ways, that time is already here. Since his election in 1997, England's young prime minister, Tony Blair, has been committed to changing Britain's somewhat dowdy image to "Cool Britannia." After attending a summit with Blair in an art-directed conference room in Canary Wharf, French president Jacques Chirac said, "I'm impressed. It all gives Britain the image of a young, dynamic and modern country." At the G-8 summit in Birmingham, Blair turned the august gathering into a bas.e.m.e.nt rec room get-together, where the leaders watched All Saints music videos and then were led in a round of "All You Need Is Love" no Nintendo games were reported. Blair is a world leader as nation stylist-but will his attempt to "rebrand Brita