Frank Gehry, the brand

Brand: A unique and identifiable symbol, association, name or trademark which serves to differentiate competing products or services. Both a physical and emotional trigger to create a relationship between consumers and the product/service. (allaboutbranding.com)

Marketers often look to other marketers for inspiration and learning on creating and sustaining successful brands. One of the most successful brands out there right now is not a product or service but a person.

Frank O. Gehry is one of the world’s most renowned architects; famous for creating structures that look radically different from anything else that have ever been built. His creations are sculptural, sensual, and curvaceous in design. Two of his most famous building are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Gehry is currently working on a $1.8 billion development plan for L.A.’s downtown district, scheduled for completion in 2014. (New York Times, April 25, 2006)

Gehry is a big name architect and a big brand. While he has been designing buildings for more than four decades, in recent years he has expanded beyond buildings to bring his distinctive design sensibility into new categories.

In 2004, Gehry designed the bottle for Wybrova Single Estate Vodka, a super-premium Polish brand that launched in the US in the Spring of that year. Like his architectural forms, his “twist” bottle design is meant to capture a sense of movement. It was inspired by a building that Gehry had created in Germany(Packworld.com, April 27, 2004)

Gehry, who is from Toronto and a huge hockey fan, also designed the trophy for the World Cup of Hockey tournament that same year. At the trophy unveiling, reactions were less than positive. The Toronto Sun included the following headline for a related story: “What Is That?” Another source described the trophy as looking like “two mating jellyfish impaled by a trombone”.

Most recently, Tiffany’s has just launched the Frank Gehry Collection, a line of jewelry “of astonishing originality and sensual beauty”, inspired by the landscape of a women’s body. (Tiffany.com) At the launch party for this new collection, Gehry is seen surrounded by a “bevy of models” and celebrities, as captured by New York Magazine.

Another of Gehry’s New York-based initiatives was the interior design of the Tribeca flagship store for Issey Miyake, a high end designer of men’s and women’s fashions. Gehry created a titanium structure that threads throughout the boutique to deliver on the fashion designer’s request for “movement, light and energy”. (tribecaisseymiyake.com)

What do other architects think about Gehry? According to one insider, there is a sense within the field that Gehry has started to tread a bit too far into the world of celebrity. One example being a supposed collaboration between Gehry and Brad Pitt, Hollywood poster boy and self-schooled “architect” who counts Gehry to be both a friend and mentor. There was talk last year in the press of the two working in partnership on a building project in the U.K.

Criticism aside, there isn’t much argument about Gehry being a visionary and trailblazer in the realm of architecture and design. Even as his empire continues to expand, he has stayed remarkably true to his core brand and its distinctive iconography. Gehry has been able to expand his empire by translating his unique equity- sculptural, sensual form- into the broader realm of design. While some categories feel like a better place for Gehry to play than others (high end jewelry versus professional sports), you can’t blame a guy, or a brand, for being inspired.