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Douglas Coupland Reimagines Roots

Every now and then you need a brand champion – enter Douglas Coupland at Roots – to breath fresh life into your marketing outreach. Like a piece of silver, brands can tarnish. They need a good polish every now and then to make sure they’re at their shiny best. Someone in your organization needs to recognize this, take the brand ball, and run with it. Canadiana clothing retailer Roots is a prime example of a brand that let itself get dull. But, recently, it's shined up nicely.

By David Allison /

RootsxDouglasCoupland
The SMPTE pattern is a crucial motif in Douglas Coupland’s new take on Canadian identity.

Every now and then you need a brand champion – enter Douglas Coupland at Roots – to breath fresh life into your marketing outreach.

Like a piece of silver, brands can tarnish. They need a good polish every now and then to make sure they’re at their shiny best. Someone in your organization needs to recognize this, take the brand ball, and run with it.

Canadiana clothing retailer Roots is a prime example of a brand that let itself get dull. But, recently, it’s shined up nicely.

In a brilliant marketing marriage, the retailer recently introduced a limited edition collection of graphic apparel and leather goods designed by Douglas Coupland, Canada’s most prolific Renaissance man. (Full disclosure: Coupland is a friend of many years’ standing. My editor made me say that.) The author and artist has reinterpreted the Roots brand – and Canada’s national identity – with the RootsxDouglasCoupland line.

It’s a definite departure from the company’s normally neutral apparel. Roots had become a stale offering, a rite of passage for tourists to Vancouver. Enter Coupland, an undisputed expert at telling stories to Canadians about what it means to be Canadian. By mining the back catalogue of symbols from the recesses of a Canadian childhood – those near-forgotten TV test patterns and futuristic tech icons – he made Roots mean something to us. Not to them. But to us. It’s a big shift and a branding coup. He took a brand that you only “get” if you’re from away, and made it something you only “get” if you’re from here.

From Twitter to the Globe and Mail to billboard posters, the clothing line has been a hot topic. And in the stores, the merchandise has been flying off the shelves. Most importantly, the Roots brand seems new again, refocused and relevant for existing patrons, and new brand loyalists too.

They even got to me. Last week, I set foot in a Roots store for the first time in my life with the sole purpose of purchasing a RootsxDouglasCoupland polo shirt.

What worked five, 10, 15 years ago for your brand doesn’t necessarily work now. As marketers and business owners we need to watch our brands carefully and recognize when they need a little dusting off.

Is your brand in need of a refresh? Roots saw that theirs was, and found the perfect person to carry the ball. Who can inspire you? Where can you find your brand champion to breath fresh life into your efforts? Are they inside or outside your organization? Who will be your brand linchpin? Is it you?