On shirtmakers, dogs and the quest to escape the cycle of growth and decline in branding.

So farewell then one-time ‘it’ shirtmaker Ted Baker. And farewell, too, to Oliver Sweeney and Cath Kidston and Laura Ashley and Monsoon/Accessorize, and any number of other brands that, five minutes ago, looked to be well on the way to world domination. 500 branches and concessions, Ted Baker had. A £58 million London headquarters. A share price that just seemed to go up and up, rising, in 2018, to an all-time high of £32.14. And then this [1].

I was in a car in the Highlands when the news about Ted Baker appeared on my phone. The car wasn’t moving. It hadn’t moved for the best part of an hour. I was on the A82 outside Fort William, stuck in a stationary traffic jam, with a sick dog wrapped up in towels in the back.

The dog was my 15-year-old spaniel, Pilot. He’s a bit blind and a bit deaf. He has a weak back leg and a head-tilt. But he’s always had a zest for life and he’s always loved swimming, so I let him go into a loch. Maybe it wasn’t my best decision ever. It all went well to start with. He was paddling away happily. Then, suddenly, he veered out into the deeper water, where he rolled over, and rolled over again, and began thrashing and twisting. Then he sank down and disappeared from sight. I waded in, fully dressed, chest deep. I reached down to see if I could feel him anywhere in the peat-dark water. I couldn’t. I turned around and around, trying to find him.

Eventually I felt an elbow. I pulled him up. He was limp and unresponsive.

We called ahead to the vet, and set off. And then we hit the traffic.

And as I say, the news about Ted Baker popped up on my phone while I was sitting there, and I got to thinking about age and decline. As you do.

Maybe it’s just the position I was in at the time. It’s said that to a man with a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. As a matter of fact I actually was a man with a hammer at that time, both literally and metaphorically. Dangling from my car keys I have a little bronze charm. It’s a replica of an amulet found by archaeologists in Scandinavia in a thousand-year-old grave. Shaped a little like a knotwork-decorated spade, its actual nature is inscribed in a runic inscription on the reverse side. Or it would be if the artist hadn’t been illiterate. It has all the right letters to spell out HAMAR IS (‘This is a hammer’) in old Norse. They’re just not in the right order. And the S is the wrong way round.

I’d ask you to bear with me here, if I digress. I promise I’ll bring it back.

So that hammer, Mjolnir, was owned by the god Thor. There’s a story about how he went to stay in the hall of the giants, and when he got there he was his usual obnoxious self. He was greedy and boastful and generally a nightmare guest. And at some point he decided that the best way to make the party go with a swing would be to challenge the strongest of the giants to a wrestling match. They looked down at him and said, ‘I don’t think so.’ But he went on and on about it, and in the end the host sighed and said, ‘Very well then, fetch Elli.’ A giant left the room and came back a few moments later leading a frail and wizened old woman with cloudy eyes and shaking hands. The host said, ‘This is Elli. You can wrestle her.’ Thor couldn’t help but see this as an insult. But the giants were insistent. It was fight her or fight no one – and Thor loved to fight. So in the end he got up and stepped forward. He closed in on Elli and she on him. And when she grabbed him, her grip was like iron. Whatever Thor did, he couldn’t break it. He strained and pushed, but she pushed harder. Slowly, inexorably, she forced him down onto his knees, and in the end she forced him to yield. Thor couldn’t believe it: no one had ever beaten him before.

But what Thor did not know was that Elli also went by another name: she was old age.

Coming back to shirtmakers, and indeed dogs, where we’re coming out here is with age and decline, and how to push back against it to prolong active life.

It seems to me that at a time when Silicon Valley billionaires are pouring funds into the quest to radically extend human lifespans, and at a time when the weight-loss drug Ozempic is now being investigated as a potential longevity medication [2] , the marketing and advertising industries need to look more closely at the ‘later life’ performance of businesses and brands.

What is it that gives some brands the ability to continue to appeal to generation after generation, while others achieve spectacular success that turns to dust after a decade or two?

Building the next big thing is sexy and cool, and it makes you feel good. In a sense you’re working with a blank sheet and creating something out of nothing. But there’s also a challenge in taking a dying brand and restoring to life, and this is something we all need to do more of.

The dog Pilot, meanwhile, arrived at the vets in Fort William an hour later, where he vomited up a lot of water, shook himself down and looked at everyone with his slightly off-centre head-tilt as if to say, ‘Well? What’s your problem?’

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0l8nyyjlglo

[2]https://fortune.com/well/article/ozempic-glp1-help-people-live-longer-longevity/

First published by Warc.com on 21 October 2024.