It’s (still) “mud season” in Vermont, courtesy this winter’s abundance of snow. Cars and trucks, in particular, look like flying mud balls.
While on my speed walk yesterday, I passed through the Equinox Hotel parking lot—Manchester VT. They are undergoing, under new owners, a massive renovation. The contractor is Bread Loaf Construction, probably VT’s best, out of Middlebury.
Bread Loaf folks aren’t as smart as they think, as I see it. That is, they apparently don’t know it’s mud season. Every contractor’s truck in the parking lot—and the FedEx and UPS trucks, too—confirmed the “mud ball” image I just pointed out.
Except for Bread Loaf’s. There were two BL trucks in the lot, both sizeable pickups. Both, in BL tradition, painted fire engine red.
And neither—and here I do not exaggerate—had the tiniest trace of dirt or mud or even dust.
Later in the afternoon, I was having a long interview with a top dog at the ad agency TBWAChiatDay, and, not surprisingly, the topic turned to branding. Out of my mouth, unbidden, popped “Branding is a squeaky clean bright red contractor’s truck in mud season in Vermont.” In fact, we talked about the fact that branding is, well, about … Everything. On the one hand, that’s not very helpful. On the other hand, it reminds us that nothing, absolutely nothing, is irrelevant to individual branding—or branding of a construction company in VT or Megacorp Inc. As a quote from David D’Alessandro, in Career Warfare, goes, “It’s always showtime.”
(I know, I know—I should have taken a picture. Sorry.)