This just in:
Silvia Lagnado has been appointed the CMO at Bacardi.
This is good news for those of us who care about corporations that care about culture.
Lagnado is the woman responsible for the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, the woman who found a way to make an ancient brand responsive to new ideas of beauty and body (as above).
I wrote her up in Chief Culture Officer. I was grateful to have such a great case in point. And a Canadian no less. I tried to get in touch to interview her. Well, really, I just wanted to bask in her reflected glory for a moment.
But no go. I heard nothing back.
I figured it was just me. Lots of people don’t write back. (You know who you are.) And then I heard from a friend who is a big sneeze in an institution that’s a big sneeze and he said that he too had reached out without effect.
If two data points are enough (for an anthropologist, they are of course one more than necessary), we might argue a pattern here. A woman who had done something remarkable, nay, revolutionary, was refusing the effects, the outcomes of her new celebrity.
So, I thought to myself, perhaps there is something retiring about this woman, perhaps she is the reluctant CCO. Clearly not. If she has signed up to be CMO at Bacardi, she is anything but reluctant.
Let’s stay tuned for great things.
References
Malykhina, Elena. 2010. Bacadi Taps Unilever Vet as CMO. Brandweek. May 26th. here.
Just stumbled across this blog at it was love at first sight. You had me at “…for an anthropologist, they are of course one more than necessary…”
I am not into advertising or marketing (or whatever you’d call it) enough to be aware of Silvia Lagnado, but I had taken note of the Dove campaign and loved it. I know I’m not the target audience, but I was so impressed by their approach I bought some Dove soap the next time my wife let me go shopping.
I don’t know what else Lagnado is capable of, but I’m in favor of more stereotype busting moves like the one by Dove.
Hi Grant-
Now I have to ask, was the Dove Beauty Campaign really a success in terms of opening our eyes to ‘new’ types of beauty? Many of the women selected for the Dove Ads represented their cultural stereotypes of beauty such as a curvy black or Latino women and a thin Caucasian women. What happened to the skinny blacks and the fat white girls? According to Dove, they are suppose to be beautiful too, yet where are they in these ads?
In addition, the conversation surrounding beauty in the Dove Ad, at least in the Untied States, surrounded ‘commercial’ minorities, ie Blacks, Hispanics, Whites and a few Asians. What happened to the rest of the minorities? In a conversation where we’re trying to include, we’ve excluded some of the largest minority populations in the United States, including Asian-Indians.
RIGHT! I know this comment does not directly relate to Ms. Lagnodo’s switch over to Bacardi but I had challenge the idea that the Dove Real Beauty Campaign was CCO worthy.
Cheers,
Sai