The Duality of Man
I’ve often heard it said that to have true success, you need to find inspiration in the things you see everyday. Well, one of the things I see everyday, and often overlook, is a large, cylindrical tube of Quaker Oats, apparently it holds 30 delicious bowls (but how do they know how big the bowls I own are?), but anyway. I have this cardboard tube sitting on a cabinet at my cubical for some time now, and to tell the the truth, I don’t really know why. I don’t even eat Quaker Oats. At this very moment, as I write this, I am eating a bowl of oatmeal that is some other brand that I enjoy more than Quaker, but each time I buy more oatmeal, I take the contents and pour them into this Quaker Oats container. There’s just something about it that’s comforting. It makes me feel like home. It’s like having an old photo of a grandparent at my desk, but at the same time, I find the thing incredibly creepy. For some unfound reason, I can’t explain why it’s so intriguing to me and why I keep it around.
It’s fairly basic packaging. Nothing to write home to mom about, so why am I writing about it…? No bells and whistles, no amber waves of grain, or Photoshopped ‘grain’ textures, just bold reds, and blues, some golden gradients for style, and a kindly, white-haired Quaker illustration…
…oooooooohh, that illustration…
It’s the kind of illustration that pops-up in dreams out of nowhere and scares the Bejezus out of you with his ‘Mona Lisa smile,’ which is as friendly as it is diabolical. There’s just something eerie about his smirk. Apparently the portrait is one of the oldest advertising mascots in America, and contrary to popular belief, does not depict William Penn. Created originally by Jim Nash in black and white in 1964 and then taken full color by Haddon Sundblom in 1972. Representing Quaker values of honesty, integrity, and purity, the rosie-cheeked Quaker elder is not supposed to be a portrait of anyone in particular.
So I guess there in lies the rub, the fact that he’s just there. He’s there and he’s just smiling. He has no identity. All we really know is that he’s a Quaker, and even the Quakers, who are now the Religious Society of Friends, don’t want him around (they lost the law suit, so he stays). He never changes. He’s like the Mona Lisa, and the frightening twins from the Shining all wrapped into one. For all eternity, he’ll be there, smiling, and that, I find creepy. The new Quaker campaign doesn’t help with my paranoia, either. It’s just weird to have a huge omnipotent Quaker portrait telling you to, “Go Humans Go.”
At the same time, however, I think he can be somewhat comforting and it’s what I find successful about the whole Quaker brand. Their identity has basically been the same for generations. Anyone who sees that illustration knows what product is being sold. Even if you hate the bland, cardboard taste of plain oatmeal, which I happen to love, the product and feeling toward it is still the same. It resonates with people. You’ll never see Quaker Oats NEW FORMULA or some other ridiculous campaign, like Crystal Pepsi. It will always be the same oatmeal that your dad ate, and his dad ate, and his dad, and so on and so forth. The Quaker Oats Guy then becomes a perfect symbol for the brand. He goes on day by day, staying true to his fundamentals, to what made Quaker a recognizable brand.
Even though I sometimes feel like he’s staring at me, in this twitter feed / TMZ / topsy-turvy / here-one-minute-gone-the-next world we live in, it can be nice to know that there’s always a familiar, welcoming smile within an arms-length…even if the contents inside are someone else’s.
EndNote: For the record, YES, I did just compare an illustration and identity for an oatmeal manufacturer to the Mona Lisa, one of the single greatest works of art, ever.
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