As a passionate follower all things Coupland, I swooned when I came across this Globe and Mail article.
This article tells of how Coupland has created and maintained an incredible personal brand through all of innumerable projects (which cross many mediums). However, what I found the most interesting about this article, was how the author argued that Coupland has been able to brand his own form of creativity. Whaa. How cool is that. I never really thought of Doug’s work like that in the past, but it is totally true, he has used an innate business sense and been able to translate it into a unique form of brand, that has thousands of passionate followers.
DCoup (as we call him), has an incredible ability to tap into the culture around him (something my group is currently dealing with on our Coast Capital project). In the article, Ms. Hanna, a business professor noted: “If culture and commerce aren’t really closed closely linked, that’s how businesses end up becoming dinosaurs,” she says. “Because they’re not keeping in touch with the zeitgeist – they’re not keeping in touch with the world around them and the values of the communities they’re involved with.”
Douglas Coupland has done exactly this to develop and maintain an incredible brand, and that is one big truth bomb I will be carrying into our project with Coast.