Quiet Brands
When I first discovered the Jack Spade brand I felt that sort of guilty pleasure you get when listening to a top-forty musician who you really actually really kind-of like, but won’t admit it. The queen of the hand-bag, Kate Spade, had worked her way into the man’s world and planted a very quiet, very fruitful seed - Jack Spade. There’s an element of design involved in the Jack Spade products that hints at refinement and that is all fine and good. But a lot of products out there do that - especially with wallets and messanger bags. So what was it about the brand that was so alluring to me?It was quiet. There are few brands out there that manage to be quiet and yet disruptive. They build affinity through a direct response to a customer need - in this case my desire for a clean-lined bag with simple colors and features, but with bold accents that remind the passerby “hey, I’m not a stuffy business guy - look at the orange on this bag would ya’?!”Now the manner in which “quiet brands” get introduced is critical to their success in that capacity. They must seep, slowly into our lives. They are more likely to be introduced by a friend or loved one than by and ad in a magazine. They are often the result of those “mavens” that Gladwell characterizes in “The Tipping Point.” Some other examples of quiet and no-so-quiet brands might include: Land Rover- not BMW, Tsubo - not Steve Madden, Phaidon - not Chronicle, Cassina - not Herman Miller,
