A friend turned me on to a great story on Studio 360 about signage for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site. Here’s the dilemma: how do you design a symbol that will instantly communicate ‘danger’ to future generations? Think about it. Nuclear waste remains dangerous for thousands of years. The site needs signs that don’t rot or deteriorate rapidly, and those signs must warn future archeologists about the dangers of the treasure inside without much explanation. The future explorers might not speak our language. How do you create a mark that intuitively deters people? It’s not as easy as you might think. A skull and crossbones sounds good on the surface, but it’s also a mark that is associated with pirates … and treasure. By trying to forewarn the treasure hunter, you might actually incentivize him to dig to his death.

The challenge reminds me of a great article penned by Sidney J. Levy and Philip Kotler back in 1971. In “Demarketing. Yes, Demarketing,” they asked somewhat hypothetically how marketing might apply to reverse market situations. We’re very familiar with the conventional use of marketing–trying to drive demand for products and services when there is ample supply. But they asked if marketing, and branding, could be used to discourage customers. Certainly, some marketers have used this in a widespread fashion with dangerous products, such as cigarettes. Levy and Kotler described the tricky process of using demarketing to reduce demand in unfavorable business segments, and they described the ethical issues in doing so. But, while much of their work focused on marketing practices and policies, they didn’t address the big symbolic question: how do you create a brand that discourages product use. It’s worth contemplating. Sometimes, thinking about questions such as these helps the marketer to better the brands that must do the opposite.

There are many cultural indicators of bad times. Demand for Spam strikes me as one of the most interesting. I’m not sure what I find more shocking — the fact that more people are buying Spam or the fact that the production line turns out 149,500 cans of spam a day. I ate a lot of this stuff growing up. Still, it’s hard to get past the description: “a gelatinous 12-ounce rectangle of spiced ham and pork.” Even for a pig lover like me, that’s hard to swallow.

Two questions I am most frequently asked about Legendary Brands are: (1) can brand cultures grow around B2B brands, and (2) how does social media play a role in brand culture development. The answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second requires a bit more explanation. As digital media becomes an increasingly important touchpoint for many brands, social functionality provides the opportunity for these brands to engage and evangelize brand cultures. I am at work on an white paper that will soon be released that studies how to use social media in brand development. In the meantime, check out some of the work that BreakingPoint is doing. Breaking Point is a startup that specializes in network testing equipment and infrastructure. Despite its short history, it has developed an impressive community channel that makes full use of social media. In fact, one of the employees I met at a recent conference confided that he found his job at Breaking Point through a twitter post. The clues to making social media work as a brand builder are inside this effort.