Article

Brand attachment: The Barefoot Bandit and our sense of self

What an 18-year-old on a crime spree teaches us about branding.

May 3, 2012

By Laurence Vincent

You'd never guess that the green-eyed teenager in the photo was a fugitive. The boy in the self-portrait that buzzed around the world's media that day in 2009 stared up at you wearing Apple earbuds, resting his head on a knapsack in a patch of brush. You could have easily mistaken him for a Boy Scout. This was Colton Harris-Moore, an eighteen-year-old runaway who eluded authorities for over two years when he embarked on an adventurous crime spree that resulted in over one hundred cases of theft, burglary, and criminal trespassing. The world knew him as "the Barefoot Bandit," a name he earned after a surveillance video caught him pilfering without shoes. He must have approved of the brand name because he began drawing chalk footprints on the floors of his victims.

Like many people, I became fascinated with the Barefoot Bandit because his story seemed like something only Hollywood could invent. He ran away from home, survived on his own in the woods for weeks at a time, burglarized affluent communities, flaunted legal authorities using a catchy alter ego, and stole a few planes to venture from the remotest corner of the Pacific Northwest to a tropical island in the Caribbean. But not everyone loved Harris-Moore. The residents of the towns and communities where he committed his crimes despised him. One said he wanted him dead. Harris-Moore damaged property, robbed people of their valuables, and violated a lot of people's sense of security. Some who knew him when he was young pitied him, describing him as a socially challenged kid from a battered home who loved animals and was infatuated with airplanes. Then there were the millions of people around the world who made the Barefoot Bandit into a folk hero. They romanticized his run from the law through a frenzy of social media activity. A Facebook fan page created about him attracted more than thirty thousand followers, with fans likening him to a modern-day Jesse James. "He's the right criminal at the right time," said Zack Sestak, the self-appointed head of Harris-Moore's fan club. "Executives are getting billion-dollar bonuses, and ... the normal people, everyday people, people who are struggling to pay their bills—they see someone like Colton taking on the system, and they say 'All right!'"

I found it a little odd that so many people identified with Harris-Moore. A cottage business developed with entrepreneurs selling T-shirts and novelty items bearing his likeness. Music videos appeared on YouTube celebrating his adventure and urging him to "fly on." It seemed especially odd because there was no indication that Harris-Moore would have approved of any of it. After he was captured, he refused to grant interviews, appeared shy in front of news cameras, and frequently asked the media to go away. He is said to have sold the rights to his life story only as a means to repay his victims.

It struck me that the Barefoot Bandit was an interesting example of a force that gives branding so much potential power: attachment. When people become attached to brands, their attachment changes their behavior. Though I can't say for sure that Colton Harris-Moore began his life of crime because he was attached to brands, his story is littered with some of the most prestigious brands in our culture. There's more to it than that, however. The story of the Barefoot Bandit provides a compelling glimpse at why there's a growing backlash against brands. Looking at Harris-Moore and the people who were drawn to his story during his run from the law, it's tempting to suggest that branding has led us completely astray from moral values. Indeed, this has been the central argument of Adbusters, the anticonsumerist organization of activists who stage demonstrations and mount campaigns to convince the public to reject advertising and media because they lead people to focus too much on using external rewards to develop a sense of personal identity.

I believe there is ample truth in their argument. Branding, marketing, and media are often misused in irresponsible and unsustainable ways—ways that overpromise on the value that can actually be delivered; ways that manipulate by appealing to our most shallow, image-driven vulnerabilities; and ways that define brands as substitutes for human relationships.

That said, I believe that brands can play a valuable role in our culture and that those of us who have the privilege of guiding brands have a responsibility to understand the impact they can exert on a consumer's individual identity.

This is an excerpt from "Brand Real: How Smart Companies Live Their Brand Promise and Inspire Fierce Customer Loyalty," published by AMACOM Books and excerpted here with their permission.