The Groove Issue 13- Five Brilliant Marketing Hacks from Salvador Dali
Welcome to the thirteenth issue of The Groove.
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FIVE BRILLIANT MARKETING HACKS FROM SALVADOR DALI
All of human history can be boiled down to these three verbs: want, take, and have. Effective marketing is precisely the art and science of making these three words dance. This is at the core of everything that we consume, and it has to be the most creative and innovative endeavor to bring any return. Otherwise, it is wasted money, especially in our current society where we are inundated with options and everyone is vying for a piece of attention. (Attention that lasts a nanosecond.)
How many times have we spent money on something we didn’t really need but the marketing campaign was such a killer we couldn’t resist? Or how many times have we seen a great product or service flop, because they had no idea how to market it? As I was thinking about scandalous and effective marketing campaigns, I remembered Salvador Dali’s life. Even though he has been dead for almost 32 years, Dali was not only a pioneer of using unconventional marketing techniques to build his own platform, but also a magician in terms of spotting opportunities and expanding his branding in a time where there were devastating wars and pandemics, and the means to disseminate information were quite different from what they are today.
Salvador Dali in his house in Cadaques, Catalonia. In terms of marketing and branding, Dali was ahead of all his contemporaries and paved the way for many other artists, celebrities, and brands who continue using his tactics today.
May Your Branding be Always Memorable
Before Bjork, Madonna, and Lady Gaga were even a thought in people’s minds, Dali was world famous for his eccentricities. Particularly his moustache, which became unforgettable and continues to be a trademark of his figure. Contrary to what people think, Dali wasn’t crazy; his upbringing was very traditional and his odd-ball persona was carefully planned. When he started his career as an artist, he was a pretty straightforward guy, but then he visited Paris for the first time in 1926 and saw the group of artists who were already established and realized how fierce the competition would be for him. Here he saw the opportunity to fashion and craft a different persona, until he had repeated and exaggerated it so much that fiction and reality became one and the same.
You Can’t Please Everyone and That’s a Good Thing
Dali painting in his studio in New York City in 1940. Photo by Bradley Smith..
What is needed in this world of millions upon millions of products, services, launches, experiences, movies, TV shows, places, and so on, is the ability to craft the strongest and most unforgettable branding. Even a piece of scandal makes things more desirable. Brands that are lukewarm in their efforts to differentiate themselves tend to disappear in this crowded environment. If anyone wants themselves or their products to be noticed, taking a passionate stand, even if some people will be turned off, is a more advantageous approach than opting for the safe alternative.
The more Dali eccentrified himself, the more he realized that some people were extremely attracted to him, while others felt repulsion. This helped him to quickly grasp that the attention was good for his career, whether people spoke good or bad things about him. Dali was clear about the power of being unconventional and yes, he liked controversies, because he loved the attention and knew it only meant more exposure and more business for him.
He referred to himself in the third person, in a way that would put Kanye West to shame. Like when he arrived in the United States in 1940 and wrote in his autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador Dali: “New York salutes me! But immediately the pride of the Catalan blood of Christopher Columbus which flows in my veins cried to me, “Present!” and I in turn saluted the cosmic grandeur and the virgin originality of the American flag.” Or when he said: “Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?”
The Dali windows at Bonwit Teller on Fifth Avenue in 1939
In 1939, Bonwit Teller, the most innovative store in the country at the time, commissioned a series of window displays to Dali. He based his unusual designs on the Narcissus complex and created a display awakening that aroused the concept of “Day” and “Night.” Dali finished the windows late at night and promised to return early the next day to see them in broad daylight. The “Day” windows had a mannequin clad only in red hair and green feathers, poised in the act of stepping into a bathtub lined with Persian lamb fur. “Night” was a bed with a water buffalo as the headboard. A mannequin slept in the bed on a mattress stuffed with glowing coals. The customers complained and told the store manager they weren’t happy about any of this, and the staff had to dress the “offensive” mannequins.
When Dali returned to check out his installation, he stormed and yelled that he had been hired to do art, not window dressing. He went inside one window and stomped around until he smashed through the glass and toppled onto the street. Needless to say, Dali’s tantrum was much better publicity than any windows, no matter what they showed or didn’t show.
Have a Range
The Chupa Chups logo was designed by Dali in 1969. His original design continues to be used today with minimal modifications.
We have noticed how companies, celebrities and even artists are expanding into more and more products and offerings. That’s because there are billions of consumers hungry for more, and they also get bored faster and have very little loyalty towards any brand. Marketers know that consumers have to be constantly teased and surprised if they want to see their dollars spent on what they are selling.
Dali knew this more than 65 years ago. His work was primarily that of a fine artist and he took private commissions, worked with galleries, produced prints and sculptures, and painted in front of the easel until the end of his life. But Dali was also an illustrator and rarely turned down an offer to create drawings for books, as he did with editions of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and even the Bible.
He even improvised as a graphic designer, when in 1969 his friend Enric Bernat complained to him that his product, the Chupa Chups lollipop, wasn’t doing as well as it should. The branding wasn’t right. Dali said he would fix that, for a fee of course, and insisted that his design be placed on top of the lollipop, rather than the side, so that it could always be viewed intact. Bernat followed his advice, and the Dali logo is still in use today with minimal variations. More than five billion Chupa Chups lollipops are sold every year in more than 150 countries, and the logo is recognizable everywhere.
There was nothing he wasn’t willing to do, as long as it could be adapted to his flamboyant style and branding. In 1973, Dali wrote and illustrated a surrealist cookbook called Les Diners de Gala, to celebrate and memorialize the extravagant dinners that he created with his wife, Gala. This book was a very limited-edition endeavor, but it gave extra range to Dali to fuel his creativity and present more projects to the market. The book was so amazing, that Taschen secured the rights to re-issue it in 2016, and it is as sumptuous and decadent in its imagery as it is impractical and impossible in the execution of its recipes.
Collaborate and Conquer
On the left: Dali’s Lobster Dress in collaboration with Elsa Schiaparelli. On the right: Dali’s cover for Vogue’s 1944 April issue.
Dali mastered the art of commercial collaborations earlier than any other artist. He did so many across so many industries: His famous Lobster dress with Elsa Schiaparelli was released in 1937 and initiated what we now know as art-and-fashion collaborations. It took almost no time before Dali was also designing perfume bottles for Schiaparelli and getting a piece of the profits.
He also partnered with Vogue in many editorials, both as an illustrator and as a creative director. In 1941, he designed the costumes and the backdrop for the ballet Labyrinth, which opened at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1941 with great fanfare. Also, between 1941 and 1958 Dalí designed an entire fine jewelry collection with Ertman and Alemany, two jewelers based in New York. The pieces are now part of the permanent collection in Dali’s Museum in Figueres, Spain.
Extend Control of Your Branding Everywhere You Can
The Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain
Dali hated the boring quality and dullness of the museums of his time. He also thought that the architecture of museums couldn’t showcase his works as they should. What did he do? He convinced the municipality of Figueres in Catalonia, where he was born, to give him the old theatre that takes up an entire block in the town, and there he built his own massive museum.
The space is designed in a way that entertains its visitors and keeps them guessing. It’s interactive and experiential, it’s surreal inside and outside, and it opened the doors to the public almost five decades ago. That was way before the experiential museums would take over the pre-pandemic world with thousands of millennials lining up expecting to take a selfie in color-coordinated rooms.
Dali was exerting control over his brand in the same way websites, stores, restaurants, and any commercial venture do. His rationale was very simple: Why leave his legacy to random curators if he could have a hand in how his works were shown and experienced once he wasn’t around anymore?
There are definitely a lot of guts, sacrifice and work in building any brand or business today, and marketing is a crucial piece in that puzzle. Thinking and acting along the lines of Dali’s marketing tactics seem even more necessary today.
Every day we see empires built on marketing, and marketers who amplify the message of their products built on Dali’s premises. We also see celebrities and personalities crafting scandalous situations and getting a lot of heat from the public, only to reap the benefits once they launch a product or two. These people have harnessed the power of what others want, finding a way to offer what they have – all for the consumers to take.
THE EXTRA GROOVE
Read:
The Secret Life of Salvador Dali by Salvador Dali
Dalí. Les dîners de Gala. Taschen Edition
50 Secrets of Magic Craftmanship by Salvador Dali
Watch:
Virtual Tour of the Dali Museum in Figueres, Spain
Salvador Dalí: A Master of the Modern Era. A documentary by BBC
Salvador Dali On The Meaning Behind His Art interviewed at The Dick Cavett Show in 1971