“Austin, we have a problem.”
I can only imagine those were the first words out of Duff Stewart’s mouth on December 19, 2020 when Vice President Mike Pence unveiled the moniker for members of the U.S. Space Force: Guardians. As CEO of GSD&M, the Austin-based ad agency charged with building the brand for this new branch of the military, Stewart must be asking himself if he shouldn’t have just left this final frontier alone.
Since Trump announced formation of the Space Force in 2018, the mocking has been non-stop. Trump has been compared to Buzz Lightyear, the space superhero who is unaware that he is just a toy. The logo looks like a dumbed-down Star Trek insignia. The uniform is camouflage… in space (?). There is even an entire poorly-written Netflix series that mocks the new branch brand of the US military.
And there, in lies the problem. The Space Force may not be a 100% bad idea as far as bad ideas go (I really don’t know). But that’s all it is. A bad idea… with even worse branding.
The Space Force’s failure to launch (pun intended) is reminiscent of past brand launch blunders such as Google Glass, New Coke, the DeLorean DMC-12 or the Segway, which weren’t necessary bad ideas or products (okay, the Segway was a lousy idea) but just didn’t connect with the public. We literally didn’t “buy it” when it came to these brands because they seemed like a joke within their industry:
- Google Glass mocked the obsession with innovation among Silicon Valley technocrats by offering a futuristic product that served no purpose.
- New Coke rebooted an American classic for no apparent reason other than to piss off half of the country.
- The DeLorean was out of synch with market demands during the Recession Era (thank God Marty solved its historical misalignment in Back to the Future!).
- Segway inventor Dean Kamen predicted that “the Segway HT will do for walking, what the calculator did for pad and pencil. Get there quicker.” (Tell that to Jimi Heselden who bought the company and shortly thereafter accidentally drove his Segway off a cliff.)
When General John Raymond, Chief of Space Operations for the Space Force, implored reporters, “This is not a farce. This is nationally critical.” I couldn’t help but think of Donald Sutherland in Animal House, begging students to take him seriously.
So, when Vice President Pence announced that those enlisted in the Space Force would be known as Guardians, it too was received as a joke. This “name chosen by space professionals, for space professionals” (what?!) immediately broke the Internet as James Gunn, Director of Guardians of the Galaxy, asked via Twitter “Can we sue this dork?”
Answer: maybe, maybe not. Marvel trademarked “Guardians of the Galaxy” in 2015. In 1985, Lucasfilm Ltd. filed a lawsuit against High Frontier and the Committee for a Strong, Peaceful America for referring to the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI) as “star wars” in television messages and literature. Lucasfilm lost and got schooled in the court decision. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell wrote:
“Not so long ago, in a studio far, far away from the policymakers in Washington, D.C., George Lucas conceived of an imaginary galaxy where fantastic creatures and courageous knights battled an evil empire with spaceships, ‘blaster’ guns and light sabers… Plaintiff has built on the national success of these movies and the goodwill associated with STAR WARS by using the STAR WARS mark to merchandise dolls, toys, comic books, cookies, paper cups, watches, candles and even bubble bath… Meanwhile, in the real world of defense strategy and international politics, newspapers, politicians, scientists and spokesmen of allied and enemy nations have chosen to characterize the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as its ‘star wars’ program…When politicians, newspapers and the public generally use the phrase star wars for convenience, in parody or descriptively to further a communication of their views on SDI, plaintiff has no rights as owner of the mark to prevent this use of STAR WARS. Even though the descriptive meaning is originally derived from the trade use, courts obviously cannot regulate the type of descriptive, non-trade use involved here without becoming the monitors of the spoken or written English language. Since Jonathan Swift’s time, creators of fictional worlds have seen their vocabulary for fantasy appropriated to describe reality. Trademark laws regulate unfair competition, not the parallel development of new dictionary meanings in the everyday give and take of human discourse. Plaintiff is in the difficult position of objecting because what he has depicted as fantasy may be frightening when depicted as a potential reality.”
So much to analyze there, but I digress from my point…
As you enjoy the memes of Groot enlisting and Rocket the Racoon leading a squadron to conquer Martians, puzzle me this: Why was the “launch” of a new division of the US military a branding event? My WWII veteran father would be rolling his eyes at this one (I’d say rolling over in his grave, but he was cremated so, yeah).
Internet hive mind, here’s what I suggest: Find out how much we paid the ad agency GSD&M for this botched branding fiasco and get our money back. Don’t get me wrong. If what we needed was a branding campaign, these guys are a great choice. After all, they came up with the “Don’t mess with Texas” campaign, inflicted us with the “babybackbabybackbabyback” jingle, and took Walmart from some podunk store in Arkansas to a global empire of 11,500 stores in 26 countries. They are the “Mad Men” of the 21st Century! (This time with ironic toxic masculinity instead of the straight up toxic masculinity of Don Draper and crew. See their website… they are “solving the world’s problems, one breakfast taco at a time” with 4 founders described as a cowboy, Big Daddy, Reverend, and a woman who is the “&” that holds them all together. Their words, not mine)
Look, they were hired to create a brand, not a branch of the military. And it’s hard to brand something that doesn’t exist and has no clear mission or purpose other than to make the current administration look like badass pioneers ready to colonize outer space. (An impossible mission if ever there was one.)
I say, let’s get our money back, America, and find someone who knows a how to launch a rocket ship rather than a brand campaign. (Not Space Karen Elon Musk!) Because I think that might be helpful to launching a Space Force. Just sayin’.
Oh wait, I think we already have that: NASA. <sigh>
wait, what? 