Bracken Darrell: Building Generational Brands | The North Face, Vans, Timberland, Logitech

Product doesn't lie, and I love product. And design is about creating great product. The thread that goes through every product you've ever used in your life is that some user is either delighted, accepting, or disappointed. Product is a way to think about everything, because everything is about how do I create a user delight — you know, including the benefits package for the user called my employee, or the board experience for a board member, or the investor experience for investors. You can design everything. You can design every single thing. I fell in love with design.

It starts with what is your brand really all about? Why is your brand here? And be distinctive, because you're distinctive. I don't know anybody who's not different from everybody else. That's why I love Vans. There isn't anybody. So, you're unique. Find your uniqueness, put it on display, and don't be ashamed of it. Even if it hurts, whatever you've lived in your past that was hard is probably the most powerful thing in you. Timberland was really appropriated by the hip-hop movement. It started in the streets. Take The North Face. One part of culture there is Alex Honnold, who's climbed El Capitan. He's got to feel supportive. I mean, we got to make sure he's got a product on his body that doesn't create one one-millionth of a distraction for him, because everything he does is life or death. We have to be so pure on that. The people who own our brands are the culture. Culture owns our brands. Every one of our brands has that definition. We have to fuel it and feed it and keep imagining where it's going to go next and participating with it. That's the magic of this business — is really realizing you have a lot of customers, but you've got to really serve them all well.

Wonder plus action is practical curiosity. And I do think it's incredibly important in your life on anything. I think the best thing to do is if you can create a little bit of a vision of what you want, of where you think you want to go — even if it's a blurry vision of ultimately where you want to go to — get that in your head and then just start making steps. You know, hang that Muhammad Ali on your wall. You know, hang that Willie Mays up there, and you'll figure out if it's right or not. You'll start to have a feel for it. And the best thing you can do is act. Act with speed. And then you see every step along the way you learn stuff, you know, and the learning is more important than the vision. But the vision gives you confidence to keep going. You know, it gives you a little conviction. My mom said this once, you know, you don't know if you like something until you're pretty good at it. That's a brilliant piece of advice.

You want everybody to get better because of you. If you're going to touch people's lives, why not try to make it better, you know, and especially if you really care about everybody. Sorry to be in the storytelling mode today, but it's probably because of Saturday.

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. I really am. You know, I think you're going to turn this thing into something really important, and even if you weren't, I'd just be honored to be here. And I like you so much.

I don't like your brother as much, but that's okay.

I forgot we met there.

Okay. I was thinking we met before that, but yeah, that's interesting.

That's right. I'm still sore from Ryan. Ryan. I keep talking to Ryan all the time about trying to get him to come back. Not to play there, but play. But he's crushing it.

That's a good lie. I wish they were more true. That's a good lie. Keep that line.

You know, drive is one of those things that is one of the hardest things that I've ever thought about. Where does it come from? Because like so many things, you know, I can probably try to analytically come up with an answer looking back, but I don't really know. Um, but I'll just tell you a little bit about what my family life is like. I grew up with three or four kids — two older brothers, younger sisters, so three boys and a girl. They're still such great friends for me, you know, and I talk to them all the time, and I got a chat running all the time. But we were really competitive, you know. I was the third of the three boys, and my sister was younger. And my next oldest brother, who's just awesome, he and I just beat each other up, probably like you and Chris did, on the basketball court, on the baseball field, the football field, on this 45-degree yard that was in front of us. If you got hit hard enough and you went down, you would actually roll down the hill into the street. So that was certainly a big factor in my growing up that influenced me. I don't know if it created drive. Then I had a mom who was the most loving person ever. Um, also drove — she expected curiosity to be more than just, you know, 'I wonder.' If you said 'I wonder,' she would say, 'Go get the dictionary, go get the World Book Encyclopedia, and get the answer.' And we did. And that taught me to be, you know, practically curious — curiosity plus action. You know, that's what's really worth something.

And then my dad was a college professor that he left when I was nine years old. He left a note in the fireplace. I think I told you this before. He left a note in the fireplace. He had a very tough life growing up. And he just said, 'You guys will be okay.' And then my mom was suddenly a first-grade teacher, single mom. She'd had polio when she was growing up. So, you know, we had no money. It was no fun. Well, I'm not a Horatio Alger story by any means, but it was a tough life growing up. But it was, you know, all those things probably contributed to what I've always had — a lot of drive, you know, like you have. And I don't know where that comes from. Um, but I think it's cultivatable for anyone at any time in your life. You could find it. It's in there. Everybody's got it. It's in your DNA. It's in there, probably inside of what's being human. And I think you can always find it. If you're lucky and you find it and it drives you, it prompts you to do things in life early — wonderful. But if it doesn't, it's always there. I've seen people tap that in a big way when they're 45 and 50 and even 60. And then I've seen people tap it from birth. You know, it's just — I don't know what it is or where it comes from.

That's a really hard one to answer, you know, because I was literally — my mom was a first-grade teacher, you know, and man, she was like always in teaching mode. So I imagine before I can remember, I was acting that way. But I had this moment during the pandemic that really crystallized it for me, and it might help anybody listening to this, because it's a story and you will not forget it. I was walking across my kitchen. You've been to my house. I have this deep yard, and you know, we're in California, so in the dead of winter you don't see snow or anything, and the grass is still there. It's just brown and there's some green, and that's kind of all the colors you see in the dead of winter. So I was walking across — it's still pretty warm. So I was walking across, and I was barefooted, you know, and I look back into my backyard, and this green and brown picture through my kitchen window, I see this pink thing, tiny pink dot, and I'm like, 'Wow, I wonder what that is.' And I just stood there and looked for a second, and it was way too far for me to figure it out. So then I just kept walking across the kitchen, and then I started to think about my thinking, and I thought, you know, if I don't go find out, all I did was wonder, and that's worth nothing. So you should always find out. And maybe think about this principle of wonder plus action is really practical curiosity. So, okay, I'm going out there. So I just walked out barefooted, walked all the way to the backyard, and you know, it makes a great story. It happens to be true. I get all the way to the backyard. It's probably 30 or 40 yards back there, and it's a red rose — a beautiful red rose all by itself. Who knows why it's blooming in the middle of winter. So that locked in for me this idea that, you know, the red rose is a symbol now for me of wonder plus action is practical curiosity. And I do think it's incredibly important in your life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. It will always be part of me, you know. For example, I take — every three to five years I take a new topic that I decide to go deep in personally. So if in the beginning it was great leaders, I would read biographies of all the great leaders I could come up with. Then I went through that phase. Then I decided World War II in Europe — I don't know enough about it. Then World War II in Asia. And then I spent — those were like three- to five-year periods. I really went deep and I tried to know everything I could. Then I picked art, and I read a book on art history. By the way, if you're looking for a great book — simple, clear pictures — you bet. Art history. 'The Story of Art' by Gombrich. Amazing. So I read that. Then I started getting into — I go to galleries and museums. So I did that for a while. Then I went to quantum mechanics about five or six years ago. I thought, you know, this seems so hard. It's quantum mechanics from art to quantum mechanics. Yeah, it seems hard to pick up quantum mechanics. But then I decided, you know, anybody can learn anything. Somebody as knuckleheaded as I am can learn some of the things I've learned, I can certainly learn that. So I started reading about quantum mechanics. I got a textbook, and then I read everything I could, and now I'm a junkie on this stuff. And so I think, you know, just continuing fueling your brain with new surprising learning is really a great way to live your life, because it will keep your brain stimulated. It's like a muscle — keeps having to stretch. And also, it's just fun.

You know, that's a very hard question for me to answer. I'll do my best to answer it, but I don't know how those things relate to the business world. I think more of what drove me there was a desire for impact. You know, I grew up — yeah, you and I are about the same height. You're probably a little taller than me, but how tall are you with these ultras on? Probably a little bit taller. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm 5'11". Yeah. So I'm 5'11" too. So, and I was 5'11" though. Probably unlike you, I was 5'11" when I was in the sixth grade. Yeah. So I was a center on my basketball team in the beginning. Then I went to big forward, and then your same height. Yeah. Oh. Two guard, then point guard. By the time — believe it or not, I was a point guard by the time I was like a freshman in high school. They were pushing me to point guard. I wanted to be a point guard. So I became a point guard, you know. So, but what I also became was — in the beginning everybody looked up to me physically, because I also had these older brothers like you did. So I was a great athlete compared to everybody else, you know, because I was getting my ass kicked by two, especially one older brother who was closest in age to me. So, and I was his height from the beginning. He grew late, so he's taller than me. So bottom line is we were go, go, go, you know. And anyway, I just — I was a natural leader, and people naturally looked up to me physically, looked up to me both. And I also had this first-grade teacher mom. So I was a pretty good student. You can imagine. I mean, you got a first-grade teacher mom — you will be a good student, or you will not have a good time at home. And I did. So I was good at school, good in sports, and people looked up to me. But I was super shy, man. I was the most shy kid you could possibly find. I would smile, but that's about all you'd get out of me. And but I was still this leader. I mean, I'd get voted to be, you know, the head of the class for student council and that kind of stuff before I deserved it. And finally, you know, about the time I decided, you know, I'm not going to be in the NBA — the height stopped, and so am I, and I'm not talented enough. About that time, which is about — I was about 14 or 15, I decided, you know what? I like this leadership thing, and I need to earn it. And so I decided I'm not going to be shy. I'm going to be an extrovert.

I really decided I'm going to be extroverted, and I started smiling at everybody. I started talking to anybody, and I learned so much about everybody, and I realized I loved everybody. And that was a change that was probably the most important turning point in my life, where I became kind of who I am today. And I really realized I love everybody. And then I thought through leadership you can have an impact way beyond anything — you know, if you want to have a positive impact on the world. And so I first thought about politics, like you probably did or do. And then I decided, you know, politics seems like a really tough road — too slow, too bureaucratic. And I liked the idea of business because it felt like it could be fast and actually could cross boundaries. Politics, you're blocked in a country, but when it comes to companies, they can be global. So I decided very early I wanted to run a public company or several.

You know, it's funny. Um, in the beginning I felt like I started it from a deficit because I was not a natural extrovert. And so it felt so — I apologize to all you left-handers out there — it felt so left-handed in the beginning for me to do even small talk, you know, like I just didn't feel very good at it. And then as I practiced it more and more, my left hand got better, my small talk got better, and I actually realized, actually, this is fun. And so I became good eventually at small talk. It's kind of the same thing happened to me in public speaking. I was probably the worst, most terrified public speaker you've ever seen. I had the worst case of imposter syndrome when I went to Harvard Business School, probably of anybody in the history of the school. But I realized, you know, all these things you're scariest of are like the — they're the most soul-building things you can work on. And I won't pretend that I was this strong person who worked on them effortlessly. They were miserable for me. But I worked, and I realized that frequency, frequency, frequency on anything you're trying to overcome — it's about frequency. Especially when it's so habitual and deep inside you, like your personality. So I really worked on being able to engage people. And I didn't think about it that way back then, but I really did work on it. And I also really worked on public speaking, and I got better and better, you know. And a funny thing happened. My mom said this once, you know, you don't know if you like something until you're pretty good at it. That's a brilliant piece of advice. And so so many people quit the piano because they're not good at it. They quit singing because they're not good at it. They quit their job because they're not good at it. And they quit things way before they know if they could be great at it, and probably could be.

You know, I sort of stumbled into my first startup, first turnaround, which was Old Spice. And I say I stumbled because I got promoted from one level to — whoops — one level to another level. And when I got to that other level, I was then kind of the second-to-lowest-level person on Old Spice. But then the company started to kind of give up on the business because they'd been working on it for three or four years. It was acquired by a prior CEO who loved the brand, but nobody else really loved the brand. They bought it for the deodorant business, and it was declining like this, you know, all the way through. It got to the low point. It got to like 1.8% market share for deodorants, and the fragrance was nothing. And so everybody kind of gave up on it. And so my boss quit. Then somebody else came in, he quit too. And then my general manager got moved above — would have been above my boss. And then suddenly there was nobody above me temporarily. And so I was the only one. So I had a — I'd graduated from Harvard Business School. I'll give it credit for this: you take a position on everything. You know, what do you need to do? And so I took a position. There were five things I thought we needed to do. So my new boss came in, this amazing general manager, Susan Arnold, who ended up being the vice chairman of P&G and chair of Disney. She's still a mentor for me today. And she came in, and she was so cool and so relaxed. She was about 5'1". Walked around barefooted all the time. You know, worked from 8:15 to 5:00, but man, she was efficient, and she was funny and tough. And I learned so much from her. And when she came in, and then not too long after that, a guy named Mike WGI, who was at Hershey for many years — he's retired now, both of them are — he came in, and he said — and so they kind of between them they said, 'So what do you think we ought to do? You've been here longer than the rest of us.' I was like, holy cow, man, this is like class in school. I said, well, here's exactly what we need to do. I got five things or six things we need to do: lower the price, change the product — I mean, they were pretty drastic things. And I remember Susan kind of looked at me and goes, 'Sounds right to me.' And Mike did too. I first presented to Mike. Mike said, 'Well, let's go talk to Susan. Seems like a good idea to me.' So we meet with Susan. Susan goes, 'Yep, sounds right to me. We're going to have to sell this to the 11th floor,' which was like the godlike floor at P&G. So it took a while to sell it up to the 11th floor. Mike had other responsibilities too. So Susan and I would go up there often, just the two of us, and sell, sell, sell. And we got everything sold, and then it was like magic. We doubled the share in a year, and it was just off to the races.

Change the advertising dramatically. I created the most boring ad in the history of — maybe the history of advertising for Old Spice. Yeah. It was before the guy on the horseback. Oh, okay. All right. And so when I — and my agency refused to do the ad. They went above — agencies go above you, and they don't like you at P&G. So they were going above me, and Susan wasn't taking their calls. And so I created this ad that was a guarantee, and it said, you know, look, if we — nobody believed that we had a deodorant that worked. So basically what I said — and we had all this fancy advertising trying to convince people — I said, you know what, we're just going to slam it home. So we're going to guarantee them that it works, and we're going to buy them their current deodorant if they don't think so. If they don't think so, they don't have to prove it. So it was called 1-800-PROVE-IT. And so I told my agency I wanted to do this, and they're like, you know, flipped me off basically. Said this is the least creative thing I've ever heard of. So then I hired an outside agency that was a local agency to do the ad, and they did the ad, and we tested it, and it tested terrible — predictably terrible. But it was very convincing, and so I still wanted to do it. And so then I went to Susan, who they were then calling, and Susan's like, you know, those guys don't like you very much. I said, I know. I'll tell you why. And she said, well, show me the ad. So I showed it to her. She said, that's really boring. I said, yeah, I know, we can do better. She said, but it's really convincing. She said, you sure you want to do this? I said, yeah. She said, okay, I'm behind you. So I went back to the agency, and miraculously they were behind me, you know, and we made the ad, and we crushed it. Absolutely crushed it. There's more to that story than I'm telling, but you —

It's so important to have a Susan, I mean, who gives you honest feedback, who you respect and trust and love, you know, but also gives you freedom. Freedom to act, freedom to make mistakes. I made so many mistakes, you know, and I hope that I'm, you know, 50% or 20% of what Susan was for me, for the people who work for me. Because, you know, if you can give people the guardrails and encourage them and give them freedom to do stuff, you know, that I think is real magic in life. You know, that's — and when you're a parent, you know, you don't think about it that way because in your early days you're making sure your kids don't, you know, fall on the furniture and break their necks. So you're beyond guardrails. It's like, no, no, no, no, yes, no, yes. But when you get out in the real world, you know, and you're working and stuff, giving people room to make mistakes — especially where it really doesn't hurt you that much — what's the worst that can happen? And by the way, the partner to that is speed. Because if you act fast and you encourage people to go fast, you can allow for these mistakes because they're usually not very expensive. The biggest problem is time. You know, once you — oh, we planned this thing and then it didn't work, and now we got to start over again. So if you can get a cultural orientation to high speed, you basically have more shots on goal. And, you know, I would rather have somebody who shoots, you know, 20 times — a team that shoots 20 times in three minutes — than shoots three times in three minutes and hits them all. Because if you shoot 20 times in three minutes, you're probably going to hit 40%. You've scored more points than the one that was three for three. That's exactly the benefit of giving people freedom but making it go with speed. And you're also learning quicker. Big time. You learn — the feedback loop is faster. Yeah.

That's — I mean, that's the big one there. So with that, can you tell me about a situation that definitely did not work but ended up being a huge catalyst for another growth situation? Yeah. Well, the job after — after I did this miraculous turnaround, I get all that credit and applause. You know, when you do that at a place like P&G, they give you a bigger job. So they gave me a bigger job. So they promoted me into the oldest brand in the company. So I was in the newest brand of the company turning it around. Now they think, 'Hey, we'll put this guy on the oldest brand of the company. See if he can turn that around.' It had gone through a 50-year slide. It was still much bigger than my brand, than Old Spice, but it was the pride and joy of the company. Every CEO had worked on Ivory. And so they put me on Ivory. Now they put me on Ivory 60 days before they were about to launch a completely remade Ivory, a new parallel line that was basically a lot like Dove. The old Ivory was old soap. And if you don't know what soap is, soap is basically pig fat. The new Ivory was a synthetic product that's like Dove that was really good for your skin. And so they put me on that. So the first thing I did, which any person who's a product person does, is I looked at everything I could find about the product. Do we have a great product? I look at it. I'm like, 'This doesn't look like we have a great product.' So I go to my boss at the time — wasn't Susan, she was in another category. I said, 'Hey, Mark, I don't think this product's great.' And he goes, 'Yeah, it is great. You just got to look at the data differently.' And he goes, 'You know, look at the internals, blah blah blah.' Okay. Then I went to his boss's boss because he happened to meet with me, and I said I was telling Mark. He said, 'Mark told me you weren't sure about the product yet. You know, now we're 48 days till launch.' He said, 'What's your worry?' I said, 'Well, you know, it doesn't look like it's a great product.' I explained why, and he said, 'No, but you got to — you know, Mark mentioned the internals. You just got to look at it this way, and then turn it upside down and look at it that way, and then put it behind your head, and you'll see that it's a great product.' So then I just happened to have a meeting with the future CEO, and I went to see him on the hallowed 11th floor, which I had occasionally made my way into the thin air up there. I was up there, and I had lunch with him, and it was all about, you know, careers and stuff like that. And then somewhere I slipped in, you know, 'I'm a little concerned about — now it's 42 days — I was a little concerned about the product for Ivory.' Mark, he goes, 'You know, Mark and Jeff or whatever that told me that said, you know what, and you're right — the product's probably not quite where it needs to be. But you know, once in a while in this company we rely on marketing, and we do — we get the best marketer we could possibly get. That's why you're here.' Immediately, man, I went from 5'11" to 7'1". I was a god, you know? I walked out of there, my chest was pumped up. I was proud of myself. I was like, wow, these guys think I'm a great marketer. I stopped. And then I thought, yeah, but the product's not quite there yet. So then you have a decision to make. 31 days left. Do I act like a sheep and join the other sheep — which now I've talked to three sheep above me, and it's really comfortable to hang out with the sheep because, you know, it's warm, it's cozy, you know, no threat because they're all around you. Or do I have to go my own way and tell them they're wrong and we're going to delay the launch by a year? And I thought, well, you know, they're so much more experienced than I am, and it's really comfortable being aligned with all these gods of P&G, so I'll go with them. 30 days later, we launched. 3 months later, we lost $34 million in three months. That's hard to do. I would encourage any of you, if you want to test that theory, it's really tough to do, but we did it. And you either proved that I was a terrible marketer or that I was right — the product really needed to be good. And I think it was the product needed to be good. So I learned for myself that, you know, I never again in my entire life have relied on anybody around me. I listen to everybody, but I make my own decisions, and I could have stopped that one. So I learned the hard way, but a great way. It was a great investment in me. I mean, it was the most wonderful investment in my growth that you could possibly make at P&G. I'm just sorry it was so expensive for them, but it was great for me, and I never made the mistake again.

I thought it was, but you never know for sure.

I'm sorry to be in the storytelling mode today, but it's probably because it's Saturday. And I'll take your time, so I'm unfortunately using it. So I had this amazing experience before I went to Logitech where I got to run Braun — B-R-A-U-N for anybody who hasn't heard of them. And Braun is a brand that has been around for a long time. And it's arguably — it was the first real design company in consumer electronics. Jony Ive, and I hope Jony doesn't think I mischaracterized this, but Jony Ive told me one time — because I'd heard this from the original designer, Dieter Rams — that Jony sent Dieter a phone, the original iPhone, and he said, 'Open up that calculator. Open up the calculator on the iPhone.' And you open it, and it's basically Dieter's phone. It's the Dieter calculator. So that calculator — he said that calculator is because you inspired me to be a designer, and you inspired me in the design principles. He had 10 design principles that you created. Now Jony's gone way beyond anything you could imagine Dieter would have done. But so I worked in that company, and I got to know Dieter Rams, and I got to know design, and I fell in love with design. You know, I fell out of love with marketing for a while and in love with design, and out of love with marketing because I worked in beauty and I felt like it was a lot of stretching the truth and lying and claimsmanship. But product doesn't lie, and I loved product. And design is about creating great product. And the thread that goes through every product you've ever used in your life is that some user is either delighted, accepting, or disappointed with a product. And it doesn't happen just once. It can happen when you first open it. It can happen while you're using it throughout its life, or it can happen the last day of its life. And so you always have things to work on. And if you take that concept — which is the biggest breakthrough for me in my career, was my second biggest breakthrough from your career — my career was I realized actually product is a way to think about everything, because everything is about how do I create a user delight, you know, including the benefits package for the user called my employee, or the board experience for a board member, or the investor experience for investors. You can design everything. So once you realize you can design everything, you can design every single thing. And you know, once you have that mindset, you just think, 'Wow, why doesn't everybody think this way? Why isn't everybody designing everything all the time?' And I think the answer is you've got to have the speed mentality. Because if you don't have the speed mentality, if you literally tried to carefully design everything, you'd never — it would take you forever to get up in the morning. Like if we designed how you get up, how you get out of bed — but if you say, no, I've got — everything's got to be fast, and some things really fast, some things a little slower, some things take more time. But so when you marry thinking, trying to act with speed all the time, and trying to design everything in your life, everything in your company, everything — you know, I think that's a great formula for a happy life.

Always. Customer. They must be obsessed. Yeah, they have to be obsessed. You know, when I walked in here late today, I was disappointed in myself because I disrupted my customers, because everybody's my customer, and you're my customer, and these guys working with you are my customers, and I made them late, and they probably have something after this. And you know, so I think if you're always thinking about people and you love people and you're just trying to make life better in every direction, you're trying to make — you want to always make things better. I'll give you a real quick story. So when I was at Logitech — just real quick, you just met someone who also thinks like that. So I'm trying to delight you, and I'm happy that —