It’s A Successful Product, But Is It A Successful Brand?: “About Jenga” (Part 3)

By Guest Author Leslie Scott

When you first arrive as a visitor to the Mpala Research Centre in Laikipia, Kenya, (where my zoologist husband and I spend 4 months of each year), you are handed an information pack containing everything from an article on the history of Mpala (the 48,000-acre wildlife conservancy and working cattle ranch in which the Centre is located) to logistics and security issues. It’s a fat dossier; living and working in the middle of a huge tract of arid African bush land, where domestic livestock graze among wild animals, poses unique problems and real dangers that have to be managed with care. Part of this management relies on the time-honored tradition of branding

As you read the information pack, under the heading of “Security and Movement” you will come across the following item:

Mpala cattle are branded—mostly with K2 and a lazy S below, are held in herds of approximately 120 head and, to protect them from predation by lion, are kept in bomas (corrals) at night. If you see other brands on cattle herds or see any suspicious looking people, please report immediately either to the Head of Security or the Mpala Ranch Manager.

Do not confront the stock thieves or illegal grazers or poachers. They may be armed and can be aggressive.

So here, in Northern Kenya, where cattle rustling is endemic (to the point where one might almost call it a game), you are left in no doubt about the purpose of branding, which is to clearly advertise ownership of your property (or products) and, more importantly, make sure there is absolutely no ambiguity about the message being signaled when that property is seen in a particular context. In this instance, only when the K2 and lazy S brand is sighted on cattle in a 120-strong herd should the signal be read as “Mpala cows being herded by Mpala staff—hakuna matata (no worries), it’s safe to approach.” In all other circumstances the message received must be Hatari! – “Flee and call security!”

However, just like anywhere else in the world, a cattle breeder’s desire to indelibly mark his livestock goes further than making sure he can easily identify and if necessary claim back any “lost” property. Among cattle cognoscenti, the provenance and therefore the likely value of an animal may be gleaned from reading its brand mark, provided, of course, it’s an already known brand (i.e., it has been in existence long enough). This mark encapsulates both the quality of the animal and to some extent the reputation of its breeder.

For example, you don’t have to spend much time among the cattle community in Laikipia to know that, when you see a Mogwooni Ranch–branded bull, you can assume you are looking at a champion of the Boran breed. His reputation precedes him. The owners of Mogwooni have only ever bred Boran cattle from their own champion Boran bulls, so there is no reason to expect anything different of this one. Therefore, you can predict that he will be supremely well adapted to the arid conditions of the area, will be able to walk miles without flagging, will graze in the hottest sun, will put on weight in the worst drought, and will sire future champion Boran bulls and cows.

It could be argued, I think, that the concept of branding or, more specifically, brand marks being used consciously to signal ownership and differentiation, as well as reputation, dates back to the Middle Ages with the adoption of heraldic coats of arms. Like the brand mark on a Boran bull, they serve the functions of any brand mark: to visually and outwardly signal the hidden, or the less apparent, characteristics of the object being branded.

Today, scholars of the subject generally agree that heraldry and coats of arms applied to armor or woven into cloth banners probably came into active use during a time of war. This possibly happened during the Crusades, when the need arose for a quick way to identify an individual knight among otherwise indistinguishable knights dressed in armor massed on the field of battle. For the medieval European knights and for present day Kenyan cattle, branding, like heraldry, is in essence, the art of capturing and representing in a highly condensed form (whether by word or image or color) ownership, differentiation, and most importantly, reputation and character. You might say that a brand mark should reflect the true “nature of the beast” that it brands.

But, back now to the question I pose in the title.  Having sold in excess of 50 million units, I think it is fair to suggest that Jenga is a successful product, but is it a successful brand?

Well, given that I believe a brand is something that captures and represents, in the highly condensed form of a word or an image, ownership, differentiation, character, and reputation, I would argue that Jenga is a very successful brand—so successful that Jenga has become a concept that has taken on a life of its own way beyond the toy world into which the game was launched.

Today Jenga crops up all over the place, from the anarchic cartoon show, Family Guy, to articles in the serious scientific journal, Nature, usually employed as a metaphor for a particular type of instability. I think this may be because, essentially, it is a unique game and a unique word; Jenga the brand is synonymous with Jenga the game. The game and its name were born together and grew up together and are now inseparable. Hear the word or see the word and you think of the game. See the game and you think of the name.