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In an era of quiet, subtle brand refreshes, Trump is embracing a full-on rebrand with an executive order that seeks to rename the single largest U.S. government agency. Trump’s 200th executive order of his second term, signed September 5, gives the Department of Defense the “secondary title” of “Department of War,” an old name for the U.S. military’s government agency before the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force were consolidated and renamed the Department of Defense in 1949. “We’re going Department of War,” Trump said. “I think it’s a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.” But like getting people to call Twitter “X or use the phrase “Gulf of America,” Trump could find his attempt at renaming the Defense Department easier said than done. You think changing a logo is hard? Try changing an entire brand name for one of the biggest U.S. employers. “Changing a name doesnt change how people feel about you overnight,” brand name expert and Eat My Words founder Alexandra Watkins says. It’s one thing to change a logo. It’s another to change a name. Trump can’t rename a department on his own without Congress, hence his executive order giving “Department of War” as a secondary name. Still, he’ll face hurdles to implementation that any brand would expect to encounter to undergo a name change. “Big organizations don’t, or shouldn’t, take the decision to rebrand lightly,” Ben Weis, a strategy director at the naming and writing studio A Hundred Monkeys, tells Fast Company. “The bigger the organization and the more widespread the name, the bigger the lift and the higher the risk for blowback and confusion.” For the Department of Defense (DOD), with its nearly 3 million military and civilian employees, the risk for blowback and confusion is uncommonly high. Pentagon officials are already fuming over the costs and work that could come with a branding change for an organization that has more than 700,000 facilities across every state and in 40 countries, according to Politico. Not the first rebrand The DOD was briefly called the National Military Establishment, but the name had the unfortunately aggressive acronym NME, which sounds like “enemy,” and it was changed less than two years later. Trump’s impetus for changing the name now is less pressing. The DOD isn’t a company, so it doesn’t have to play by the same rules as a corporate rebrand, but Scott Milano, founder of the brand naming agency Tanj, says it fits into one of the buckets he often sees with renaming efforts. “Normally, when businesses try to rebrand, there’s either a problem, like some sort of brand-specific problem, or in the case of naming . . . there’s a trademark issue, like you can’t use it moving forward,” he says. “Obviously that’s not the case with the Department of Defense.” The more relevant way to frame it, he says, is when businesses outgrow their name and want to signal something new to the market, as he sees Trump doing with the change from “Defense” to “War.” “It’s intentionally intimidating and it’s in your face, and I assume that was on purpose,” he says. But being obvious isn’t always seen as a virtue when it comes to picking a brand name. In fact, experts say, it can undermine the message the organization is trying to send. “Honest people don’t tell you that they are honest, cool people don’t talk about how cool they are, and truly strong people don’t puff their chests outthe world knows this,” Igor Naming Agency cofounder Steve Manning says. “It’s a reaction to feeling we are being seen as militarily impotent. Since this rebranding is nothing more than a surface treatment, it will be ineffective for the three years it will be in place.”
Category:
E-Commerce
You think you know Patagonia, the apparel brand beloved by crunchy hikers and finance bros alike. But the company is more than half a century old, and it has taken many unconventional turns to become an icon of sustainable business. [Cover Image: Simon & Schuster] A new book digs into this history, offering lots of untold moments about the company that even die-hard Patagonia fans may not know. In Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away, author David Gelles provides a behind-the-scenes look at how Patagonia was built. Through in-depth interviews with Chouinard, we learn about the many conflicting pressures the Patagonia founder faced as he tried to create an apparel brand that does more good than harm in the world. Here are three surprising things that happened along that journey. Patagonia Once Partnered with the Pentagon In the 1970s, the U.S. military was one of Patagonia’s biggest fans. It began with climbing gear. Chouinard, an avid rock climber, first came up with the idea of starting his company because he wanted to make better climbing gear. He couldn’t find metal spikes that he liked for wall climbing, or ice axes for ice climbing, so he developed them himself. When the military got wind of these functional climbing tools, they began buying them for soldiers who would need to scale walls during military missions. In the decades that followed, Patagonia introduced innovative new fabrics that were moisture wicking and thermoregulating. By the 1980s, the military was buying off-the-shelf Patagonia base layers and fleeces for enlisted personnel working in cold climates. “The [A]rmy’s 3rd Infantry Division was soon handing out full kits of Patagonia off-the-shelf long underwear and dark blue pile suits to its long-range surveillance teams to ward off the cold,” Gelles writes. Then, Patagonia was enlisted to create a custom cold-weather layering system for soldiers. Today a close partnership between Patagonia and the U.S. military seems odd: Patagonia is associated with hippies and environmentalists, and yet the gear was being used to train soldiers for combat. And indeed, over the years, the brand’s antiwar employees and fans often criticized Patagonia for this collaboration. But Chouinard wasn’t bothered by the complaints, Gelles says, partly because he was a veteran of the Korean War and understood how hard life was for soldiers. In the end, Chouinard argued that Patagonia wasn’t making weapons or ammunition. “Bras don’t kill people,” Chouinard told Gelles. “People kill people.” Patgonia and Walmart Were Once Unlikely Bedfellows In 2005, Walmart invited Chouinard to speak to its top executives at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Rob Walton, Walmart’s then CEO, had been connected with a sustainability expert who had worked closely with Patagonia, and he was intrigued by how Walmart could potentially be a force for good. Chouinard, in turn, was intrigued by the invitation: He believed that if he could convince a company of Walmart’s scale to improve its practices, this could create enormous impact. Chouinard and his wife, Malinda, traveled to Arkansas from their home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on a private jet sent by Walmart. In the book, Gelles paints a picture of what happened when Chouinard took the stage wearing a ratty wool jacket with leather elbow patches. He didnt mince words. He accused Walmart of not using its influence for good. In a striking example, Chouinard pulled out an enormous pair of jeans, designed for a morbidly obese person, with billows of fabric. According to Gelles, Chouinard said, “I have to hand it to you. How do you sell something like this for $8.99? The fabric alone must cost that much!” Despite the confrontational nature of Chouinards talk, Walmart executives were eager to learn more. So they started making regular visits to Patagonia HQ to learn what they could. The two companies collaborated to create the Sustainable Apparel Coalition to develop a common set of standards called the Higg Index for fashion brands to sign on to. But after the index launched, the partnership petered out. Chouinard believed Walmart execs were willing to do a few easy things to improve the companys supply chain, but not what was required to actually clean up the entirety of that supply chain. Patagonia accidentally sickened its Boston store employees In the late 1980s, Patagonia opened a store in Boston. But after a few days in operation, Gelles writes, workers began complaining of headachesand the symptoms didn’t go away. So Patagonia brought in an expert to see what was going on. The determination was that the companys new clothes were covered in formaldehyde. As workers unboxed the merchandise, they were breathing in toxic fumes. (Formaldehyde is a carcinogen.) The expert recommended a better HVAC system as a solution. Instead, Chouinard wanted to rid his product of toxic chemical treatments. Over a long process aimed at getting rid of toxins that harm both people and the planet throughout the supply chain, Patagonia eventually landed on cotton farms that often use large amounts of pesticides. Cancer rates in regions where cotton is grown were 10 times higher than normal. So Chouinard asked his team to explore sourcing organic cotton. By the mid-1990s, Patagonia was among the first apparel brands to use organic cotton. By the time Walmart’s executives partnered with Patagonia in the early 2000s, they too became interested in organic cotton, and began placing large orders with farmers. Some Patagonia employees worried that the relationship would harm the formers business, since organic cotton was part of what differentiated Patagonia from Walmart and other competitors. But over time, Patagonia grew into its leadership role in the apparel industry and realized that when other brands followed its lead, it was a win for all.
Category:
E-Commerce
Fawning is a survival mechanism that develops in response to traumaa fourth response alongside the better-known fight, flight, and freeze reactions. Psychotherapist Pete Walker defines fawning as “a response to a threat by becoming more appealing to the threat.” When we fawn, we mirror others’ desires, suppress our own needs, and prioritize external validation to maintain safety. This isn’t simply people-pleasing or codependencyit’s a physiological trauma response that develops when fight or flight aren’t viable options. Recognizing the signs: are you fawning at work? For some fawners, it’s hard to identify their fawning because they’re just “meeting expectations” and in that context, fawning looks an awful lot like success. We pursue these paths, in part, because success is safety. It’s a shield. It brings us titles and money and all the things. At least that’s what we are told and sold. Working at a law firm is the perfect environment for a compulsive fawner. Administrative assistants fawn over lawyers. Associates fawn over partners. Partners fawn over clients. It’s a very clear hierarchy, and self-abandonment is expected. The more hours you bill, the more the firm makes. So, while my client Anthony was at the top of his game, he was also just like the rest of us, at the mercy of the culture he was inavoiding conflict to gain financial security and access to a secure life. Anthony was referred to me when his 20-year-old son went to rehab. On paper, Anthony was impressive: Harvard grad, law school, partner in a global powerhouse firmdetails that could’ve intimidated me. But I’ve never felt intimidated by Anthony. He is one of the most loving and loyal fathers Ive ever encountered as a therapist or otherwise. But also, Anthony is a fawner, and fawners want to be liked. With his black tee and salt-and-pepper beard, he logs onto every Zoom session with a cheerful smile that evokes one of my own. Early in our sessions, Anthony remarked, “I think I’m trying to win therapy.” We both laughed before he continued, “It’s like I’m implementing insights from our work so you can tell me all the progress I’m making. It’s all about the pat on the head.” How your family dynamics followed you to work While Anthony’s parents never told him to go to an Ivy League school or to become a lawyer, he always felt he needed to do those things. In a way, it was their lack of interesthe never got approval for anythingthat led to his endless quest for validation. As the stakes of achievement kept getting higher, he thought, how can my parents deny me approval now? And yet, they did. Any time I brought up his parents, he would defend them. Anytime he started to speak about how they hurt him, he would backpedal. “I can’t speak badly about my parents. I’m making them sound like monsters.” He stuck with the party line he had learned over the years: “We are a close and happy family.” But then, a couple of years into our work together, Anthony received a voicemail that altered his life. He was in a period of real transformation, beginning to advocate for himself in personal and professional relationships, setting boundaries, and leaning into new interests. He was trying to communicate differently with his parents, expressing apprehension about an upcoming family wedding. It would be the first time his son would be exposed to both extended family and that much drinking since his time in rehab. So, he made himself vulnerable, telling his parents his concerns about his son and how they both might react to this potentially stressful event. His parent’s reaction to his son’s addiction recovery had always been, “He’s all better by now, right?” Their avoidance made Anthony’s skin crawl. But he dug in, trying to be in real relationship, giving them the benefit of the doubt. “I know you guys are really excited about the wedding, and I am too for a lot of reasons, but I’m also nervous . . .” It soon became clear that they didn’t want to talk about his genuine concerns, so Anthony just got off the phone. Two hours later, he saw his mom calling back and he let it go to voicemail. When he listened to the message, his stomach dropped. It was a mistaken dial. His parents had accidentally recorded a two-minute, vicious snippet of their private conversation about Anthony and left it as a message on his phone. “Does he think he has to protect his son forever? He just needs to suck it up and get in line for this wedding! And how do we even believe him in this fight with his sister-in-law, when he’s always exaggerated everything?” Unfawning and breaking the cycle As Anthony shared what happened, I saw his devastation. “Deep down, I knew all of this was true,” he said to me. “But maybe I needed to hear it. Now I know I wasn’t making it all up.” After that day, Anthony made a conscious choice to stop living for his parents’ approval. He saw that he couldn’t fawn enough to ever get it. This was all deeply painful, but ultimately freeing. Grief unlocked necessary anger about how long he’d lived his life with a diminished sense of self. And that anger led to change. I call that behavior change “unfawning”and it’s a powerful, healing step in our recovery journey. When we learn to unfawn, we learn to detach from our old ways of people-pleasing and tune in to the self we had to abandon long ago. Anthony’s parents didn’t change. Knowing they’d never take personal responsibility; he never confronted them. The culture at his firm didn’t change, and he didn’t have to retire early or find a new career. His son was living his own life, in a new relationship, starting to find his own way. Anthony was doing the same, changing the way he showed up in every area of his life. One way he took back his power: He started to lean into the “weird stuff” his family had made fun of, but that he had always been drawn to. Battling a lifetime of messaging, this is not what a man does, he spent a week at a men’s wellness retreat. While some guys swapped the more vulnerable activities for golf and networking, Anthony immersed himself in all the taboos he’d avoided out of ridicule for 50 years. Anthony’s life is a testament to what happens when we stop fawning. Something finally turned. He dropped the script he’d been reading forever, and in letting it go, he found a life that feels unique, creative, and expansive. Unfawning is a kind of growing up. Especially for those who relied on this safety strategy since childhood, we inadvertently stayed small and childlike and we didn’t know it. We were stuck in time. Unfawning means getting reacquainted with the self we tucked awayto discover who we truly are. Adapted from Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves and How to Find Our Way Back by Dr. Ingrid Clayton, published by Putnam, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.
Category:
E-Commerce
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