I was fortunate to spend a few years leading the rebrand and creative campaign work on behalf of an iconic American brand named Stanley. Not Stanley the tools or Stanley the Steamer, but Stanley, the tough-as-nails green metal bottle that transported grandfather’s coffee to work. If you don’t know it by name, you’d know it by its appearance. It’s what the average person might refer to as a thermos (but it is most definitely not one), with a shiny silver top, metal handle on the side, and an iconic matte hammertone green body. We referred to them as ‘timebenders’ because the bottle looks as at home in a dusty old 1930s farm shed as it does on the shelf next to a record player in an architect’s modern Cobble Hill apartment. While its look hasn’t changed much over the last hundred years or so, the brand has gone from a blue-collared staple to a war time essential to the outdoorsman’s trusted companion (and a little bit of everything in between), leaving tales along the way that are nothing short of legendary

You name it, these bottles have been through it and came out on the other side. They’ve survived category five hurricanes, 4,000 footfalls from cliffs, snake attacks, World War II B-17 bombings runs, and getting run over by what seems to be every large piece of moving machinery known to man, including motorcycles, semi-trucks, bulldozers, and tanks. There was one about a massive hotel explosion in 1970s Maryland. The only thing recovered from the rubble was a Stanley. And there was the one about a man sitting at the kitchen table cleaning a gun that misfired. The bullet was stopped by a Stanley on its way towards his wife who sat across from him (yikes). But of all the Stanley stories that are, by the way, enshrined in a leather-bound book, none stuck with me more than the one I am about to share. Not because it was more unbelievable than the others, but because of what it said about the brand. And brands in general, for that matter.

After years of retirement, a relatively wealthy engineer passed away. His children, of which he had nine, gathered to witness the reading of his last will and testament. Amidst some minor grumbling, the estate was divided up appropriately between them. While the engineer owned many assets, he failed to realize which one might be the most hotly contested. You probably can guess the item. A fight erupted over dad’s Stanley. After spending more time arguing about it than any other item, they eventually resorted to the only civilized way to decide. They drew straws. Of all the money exchanged, all the assets, and not to mention all the other items dad owned, the thing that the family fought over was a bottle that was probably purchased for $25 at the time. And that’s when it hit me. Call me what you will for using the passing of what I can only imagine was a decent man and his squabbling family as an opportunity to think about branding, but my takeaway from reading this story was: that is when you know you have a brand that matters