Branded Blog

A few weeks back I spent a weekend in the gorgeous, drama-filled arid landscape of the Cederberg about 3 hours north of Cape Town running alongside the Karoo in an area called the Koue Bokkeveld (translation: Cold Goat Field –really?) with my other half who is an avid bare-foot mountain guide – but that’s a different story.

Although as a child we traveled all over the country-side by car (my dad’s preferred method of familial transport), and pretty much got to see most of the major highlights in SA, this was my first exposure to the Cederberg with its’ orange and grey sandstone, red and green lichen and enormous boulder strewn mountains and valleys. Being a word addict, my favourite name by far was the “Valley of the Red Gods” where a couple of thousand 3 to 5m tall rocks stand alone or stacked on top of each other all across the valley – seemingly looking westward and waiting for the setting sun that infers upon them their red god status every evening in impressive form.

This is also the kind of area where you can take a 3 hour uphill climb to a place called the Wolfberg Cracks which seem fairly interesting from the ground but are mind-blowingly huge cracks in the side of the mountain when you get up to them. Some so large that you could have a fairly large party inside one of them, but in one or two others there are some crawl-spaces that need to be negotiated in order to get back down to ground – not my favourite activity, shall we say, and a rather stern discussion was had with said barefoot mountain guide at these points, but again – a story for another day. Most impressive of all up in the Wolfberg cracks are the amazing huge stone arches that have been eroded from the walls of some of the canyons and are all completely invisible from the outside. In fact, you could be on top of something that looks solid and immovable, only to discover that it is actually the top of an arch and where you thought there was a wall of rock below you, there is actually only an arch of rock and a lot of beautiful nothingness below. And in places you can see the beginnings of new arches just a few centimeters high. Come back in a couple of hundred thousand years and they too will be impressive rock arches hiding in the shadows.

Let me put this further into context for you. Out in the Cederberg, once you pass a final cellphone mast high on the peak of Sneeukop, you quickly lose contact with the outside world. There is no cell phone reception in the Cederberg. The dirt roads are good but rugged. The nearest petrol station is in Ceres, about 30km’s away, and the nearest Woolies is much further than that. The best you can do in terms of shopping is the occasional tuck-shop type place at the various places to stay in the Cederberg or some lovely wine, olives, or rooibos tea which are all from the area. Do not expect a shopping spree inbetween hikes.

So in this context, my out-in-the-wild brain ran into sudden cognitive dissonance with my branded-brain when we took a slow drive back to our cottage at Mount Ceder on the first day in the mountains along a dusty road, watching the sun slowly setting fire to the red cliffs all along the route and found, just past a low water drift across a running stream, an enormous Coca-Cola branded sign-board.

As with shock in general, it’s the unexpectedness of something that catches you off guard. We stopped the car and stared at the sign for a few seconds, trying to comprehend what kind of rock-painting this was until our branded brains kicked back into gear and registered the ubiquitous red and white ribbon and we decoded the implication that even here, in the midst of the silent drama that is the Cederberg, you could find a Coke at (almost) arms length and you could feel certain that the establishment being indicated by the Coke signboard as being nearby would be a safe bet – they sell Coke after all.

But this moment of shock got me thinking – is it possible that even I have a shall we say spiritual line across which I do not believe brands should venture? Did the Coca-Cola sign with all it’s global brand equity and impressive penetration into the lives of it’s target market (I don’t actually drink the stuff anymore, I feel obliged to say, but technically I would still be in the rather generic Coca-Cola target market) cross over that line for me in the Cederberg? It kind of feels like it. Strange since I’ve spent the best part of the last 12 years attempting to insinuate a fairly impressive list of FMCG brands into consumers lives in just this fashion, on the basis that you need to be where they are and you need to talk to them when they might be open to hearing you. And to give it its’ due, had I been an avid Coke drinker I might have seen this signboard as a welcome relief from the hot dusty surrounds. But I’m not. And I didn’t. And I don’t think that I really liked Coca-Cola ruining a perfectly gorgeous sunset or a perfectly average susnset snapshot. So now the conundrum – does my crossing of the Coca-Cola line deep in the heart of the wild country mean that I have lost faith in brands? Do I need to declare myself a brand atheist and desist from branded activities forthwith? Maybe I’m deluded, but I’m feeling pretty ok about carrying on the good fight for better quality, more thoughtful and impactful marketing while still feeling quite vociferously that I really don’t want my sojourns into the wilderness interrupted by such obvious symbols of tame and taming society. I want to keep my branded ideals and still believe that I, like Robin Williams’ in “The Fisher King” can escape it all and run around the wild mountains naked in celebration of having overcome all things societally and culturally acceptable – such as brands. Go figure. Hope that doesn’t make me persona non grata in the brand world, I really do need to work!