Adam Forkner, Yum! Brands, Inc., Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly (pdf), Richard Florida

Last night I was contacted by Adam Forkner, the Portland, OR-based music and video artist. Being as it was very late in the evening, and as Adam had yet to eat a proper meal, I was asked to suggest (demand?) specific things for Adam to eat. Of course, as I have been thinking continuously about co-branding, co-branded products, and awards for the co-branding of co-branded products over the past several months, Yum! Brands, Inc. immediately came to mind.

Founded in 1997 as TRICON Global Restaurants, Inc., the consortium of quick-service restaurants (QSRs) we now know as Yum! first emerged as a brand itself in 2002. Yum! Brands, Inc. is now the world's largest restaurant company, especially in terms of impressive sounding numbers: over 34,000 KFC, Long John Silver's, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and A&W All-American Food QSRs can currently be patronized in more than 100 countries. Most relevant to the present moment in the world of marketing, a principle factor in the success of Yum! Brands QSRs has been an aggressive use of co-branding, prompting a case study by Cathy Enz at Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly in 2003 that analyzed in depth the benefits of co-branding as it pertained to Yum! Brands, Inc.

According to Enz, Yum! Brands CEO David Novak has committed the corporation to more than tripling its number of co-branded locations by 2007. This means more Pizza Hut/Taco Bell's, more Long John Silver's/A&W's, and ultimately more Pizza Hut/Taco Bell's combined with other Yum! Brands brands in highly experimental "3in1" destinations.

For Adam, the combination of multiple Yum! Brands in one location meant that, after finding a Togo's Sandwiches and Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors 0.3 miles apart on the SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy, only to discover upon arrival that Togo's was closed; a KFC/A&W's was there to equally serve his fast-casual dinner and after dinner treat needs:

my dinner for andrew on Vimeo

Adam's observations about the regional branding of individuals really struck a chord with me. What does it mean to be "Beaverton" as opposed to "Portland"? A number of associations are attached to each city, in much the same way we as consumers are encouraged to attach mouthwatering point-of-sale concepts such as "tastiness" and "yumminess" to the food products manufactured and distributed by Yum! Brands, Inc. Cities even market themselves to prospective businesses and young talented people, and are encouraged to do so by trend hunting pop-sociologists like Richard Florida.

Branding is not exclusive to the world of consumption. It taps into a much deeper human need for identification with regional and/or sociological subgroups. Perhaps thinking of branding in this way will re-direct our understandable disdain for the world of branding and help us better comprehend the causal forces behind Yum! Brands, Inc.'s alarming success. Of course, the appreciation Adam expresses for his situation is couched in a certain irony: the distance between artist and object is obtainable through art, but perhaps not so in critical writing.

How to discuss Yum! Brands without descending into bitter critique? Maybe just make a video.