Yee-Haw!

Whip out the brandin’ irons, boys! We got us a herd!

If there’s one thing Texans know a lot about, it’s branding. From the time we’re the youngest of younguns, born-and-bred Texans are besieged with tales about our rip-snortin’ collective past. A large part of that past, as anyone familiar with Western movies knows, was cattle. The Old West still is a living, breathing thing to young Texans, even to the point of studying cattle barons and their brands in school.

Branding in the Old West was more than a way to make a mark on society: It was a matter of survival. Empires were built (not always legitimately) on the strength of a good horse, a bale of barbed wire, and a branding iron. Under the laws of the day (some of which remain in effect in Texas), rustling branded horses or cattle was a hanging offense; however, any bovine found running loose without a brand was fair game and usually quickly found a mark of some kind on its hide.

Most livestock brands, like modern trademarks, were registered, and many remain in use today: The King Ranch’s “running W” (patterned after either a diamondback rattlesnake or the sweeping horns of a Texas Longhorn bull, depending on whom you believe) and the Four Sixes’ stylized four sixes (which actually do not, as legend has it, represent the winning poker hand that decided the ranch’s ownership) are two examples.

Livestock brands played a larger role in the lives of ranchers than just protecting their herds. In many cases, ranches that began with one name eventually became so closely associated with their livestock markers that the ranches began to share the brand’s name. Such was the case with the Four Sixes, which began as the Burk Burnett Ranch (a rather mundane moniker for a one-third-million-acre spread). If a nearby hamlet (Burkburnett, Texas) hadn’t been named for him, the original owner of the Four Sixes might have slipped into history’s footnotes, but everyone in Texas knows the Four Sixes to this day.

That’s the genius of branding, and in most cases, it happens almost outside the general public’s consciousness. It is not, as some seem to think, slapping their corporate moniker on everything in their universe (including employees). The essence of a brand is much grander than that. A brand is a larger-than-life icon that pervades the human experience.

What strikes me most about almost all industries is how few people have an honest, straightforward understanding of what the term “branding” actually means. It’s more than just a name or a look; a logo (McDonald’s golden arches) or a catchy marketing phrase (“You deserve a break today”). True branding goes to the heart of human psychology, causing the tiniest trigger to conjure associations that are so ingrained in the culture as to be synonymous with everyday objects or experiences. Are we more likely, after a sneeze, to ask someone to pass a facial tissue or a Kleenex? When watching kids zip along the beachside boardwalk in Santa Monica, are we more likely to yell, “Look out for the guy on the in-line skates!” or “Look out for that idiot on Rollerblades!”? In the South, we don’t recognize Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, or Sprite — to us, every sugary, carbonated beverage is a Coke. (“Jake, y’ont a Coke?” “Naw, but I’ll take some sweet tea if ya got it.”)

That’s branding, and it goes far beyond “baby, remember my name.” The best brands ubiquitously manifest themselves long after the cute advertising slogans have faded and the swag has worn thin. Like a symbol burned into the hide of a steer, the best brands are so burned into our consciousness as to be unforgettable, even if we’d love to forget them. (In most cases, in fact, forgetting a prominent brand is a bad idea, as usually it results in the absent-minded individual receiving a polite-but-firm reminder that he or she has violated a trademark belonging to the client of a firm with the names of an entire graduating class at Harvard Law scrawled down the side of a very imposing piece of letterhead. Trust me.)

How does one create a brand? Reputation and longevity have much to do with the process. True “brands” don’t happen overnight (ask Hugh Hefner). When they do, it’s because the right set of circumstances occurred at the right time in the hands of the right individuals, and it’s magical.

Much like wrangling cattle, also it also requires one heckuva lot of work.

—Kathee “Tex” Brewer

(This column originally appeard in the July 2007 issue of AVN Online.)