Offside Undo.(Waste Management Inc. )(Brief Article)

H. Wayne Huizinga made a dumpster load of money the old-fashioned way-he carried out other people's trash. But he did it with style. Overnight, garbage wasn't garbage; it became ``waste.'' Picking it up was ``managing'' it, and thus was born Waste Management Inc. Talk about a brand challenge.

Automotive brand management belongs in its own landfill. Perhaps it is brand management as brand manipulation that is the sesame seed under my gum. Do not maneuver me; I hate it. Besides, brand management is about reactive after-the-fact spinning rather than active before-the-fact creativity.

It did not take a seer to recognize what Ferdinand Piech accomplished with Volkswagen and Audi (and Seat and Skoda). He paid close attention to product detail-from fit-and-finish to quality to performance to style to interior design-and transformed those companies.

Jim Hancock is about the smartest brand marketer I know. At least he talks a good game through a haughty Shiraz. This 40-something ball of A.D.H.D. has in his resume the branding of cartoonist Gary Larson's Far Side to T-shirts and coffee mugs. He was the man behind the branding of No Fear. Bright and passionate and cerebral, Hancock runs a company called Cathexis (look it up) Labs. Once named among the country's top 100 marketers by Ad Age, Hancock preached brands and their effect as an emotive tool.

Hancock's current thesis is simple: Branding as we know it is dead. Branding relies on customer needs, but Western civilization has no needs. Western civilization has wants and desires. And wants and desires can't be managed.

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