The wild story of a wildly distinctive brand asset

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap

“Who else but God can make love last one trillion years of sweet eternities?! For when conquered after years of hardworking absolute cleanliness, toil, sweat, blood, love can strike like greased lightning sent by God to spark mere dust to intense blazing fire and create new love, faith-hope-guts-strength as only God inspires, create the unity of the human race in Astronomy’s Eternally Tremendous, All-One-God-Faith, as all mankind desires!” – Dr. Emanuel Bronner

It goes on like that for a while.

Not all Distinctive Brand Assets have an incredible story. Then there are the labels on Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. You’ve probably seen it, maybe you’ve read it. It breaks every single design and branding rule imaginable. Which? Is why it’s so great.

Byron Sharp of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute is a believer in “meaningless distinctiveness.” There’s something a bit off about the word “meaningless.” After all, Tony the Tiger means something. The Nike swoosh means something. The label on a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap means … a whole lot of things.

There was a real Dr. Bronner. He wasn’t a real doctor, though he had the equivalent of a master’s degree in chemistry. Emanuel Bronner was born in 1909 into the Heilbronner family of German-Jewish soap makers who were living in Heilbronn, Germany. His family actually invented liquid soap back in the 1890s.

As a teenager, Bronner really, really, really did not get along with his parents. So he did what any kid in his situation would do — he left home, moved to America and started making his own soap.

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps was and always has been pure Castile soap made from vegetable oils. Most soaps at the time were made from a combination of animal fats and chemicals. It’s environmentally friendly, hypoallergenic, organic, fair trade and vegan.

It’s also versatile. It’s a body wash, a shampoo and laundry soap. You can use it to wash your produce, your dog (maybe not at the same time) … even your teeth if you happen to run out of toothpaste.

(I took a quick look in my cabinets and guesstimated the number of cleaning and personal care products Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap could potentially replace. It’s a lot, though it won’t replace my toothpaste anytime soon. Anyway … )

None of this, of course, explains the label.

It really began with two specific events: His parents were murdered in the Holocaust — he had been pleading with them to leave Germany for years — and the atomic bomb happened.

Devastated and horrified, he began to assemble his unique religious and moral philosophy.

He realized that regardless of race, religion, class, or creed, humans are all one or none. Either we are all of us in this together, or we are doomed as a species. Keep in mind this was the early days of the Civil Rights movement and the beginning of the nuclear arms race, the Cold War and the Red Scare. So it was not exactly a time of unity and “we’re all in this together.”

Here’s the thing — Dr. Bronner was an excellent soapmaker. He absolutely nailed the Product P of Marketing. But to him, his message of transcendent unity was so much more important than the soap. Most days, you could find him in L.A.’s Pershing Square, preaching to anyone who would listen, giving his soap away for free.

Again, this was the late 1940s and early 1950s. Hippies hadn’t been invented yet, and no one really cared about Spaceship Earth and the Moral ABC of the Free, All-One-Faith-in-One-God-State! They were there for the soap.

People loved the soap, ignored the message, and got out of there as soon as they could. Bronner quickly realized no one was listening, so he crammed his entire sermon on the label in 5-point font.

You want the soap, you get the sermon.

Eventually the 1960s happened, and counterculture types were drawn to both his soap and his message of peace and unity. By then, you could find Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap in small health food stores and co-ops. He could have easily expanded distribution, but Bronner would only sell to people who would sit and listen to him. Don’t want the sermon? You don’t get the soap.

When there was growth, it was agonizingly slow.

The brand only really took off after his kids took over. Today, his grandkids run the company, and they’ve kept Dr. Bronner’s mission, vision and values very much intact while adding a few of their own. They’ve also left the label mostly alone. If you want the soap, you get the sermon. Whether you read it or not is entirely up to you.

They’ve also grown the business from $4 million in revenue in 1998 to $200 million in 2023. And you can find Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps pretty much everywhere these days, including Target and Walmart.

What does this mean for you?

Don’t mess with your Distinctive Brand Assets. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Bronner’s kids or grandkids to lose all that copy and lean into vibes. But when your founding father (literally) hands you a DBA like this, and it’s something you’ve become at least somewhat famous for, it’s better to just leave it alone. Celebrate it, even.

It’s perfectly okay to be weird. We’d argue that it’s the only way smaller brands have a chance to get noticed, remembered and thought of in buying situations. Of course, you have to be weird in your own way. It’s no use being weird in the way Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps is weird, because this particular flavor of weird probably wouldn’t work for your brand. Besides, they got there first. And there are plenty of other ways to be weird that will work for you.

Does distinctiveness have to be meaningless? Byron Sharp is correct: It is absolutely critical that potential customers instantly recognize your brand. Also, customers don’t actually care all that much. You care about your brand. We do too. Customers, for the most part, don’t. That’s why distinctiveness is so important. But this odd and oddly hopeful manifesto is so foundational to Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, it works as a meaningless, distinctive brand asset and a meaningful one … even if most people never read the whole thing. Just a thought.

We’ll see you next time.

Sources!

Episode 469, David Bronner — WTF with Marc Maron
Who Was Dr. Bronner? — Stuff You Should Know
Emanuel Bronner — Wikipedia