Squash.

About 1990 or so, the Japanese car brand Honda became the first Japanese brand to enter the huge US automarket with a super-luxury line of automobiles.  

They called it Acura and at the start, before our environment, our safety and our highways were sullied by the enormous trucks everyone drives so as to compensate for their weenie peenies, they offered just two basic car lines: The high-end "Legend," and the sporty "Integra."

These were nice and good cars and the macro economics of the time and the strength of the yen allowed Honda, then Toyota with Lexus, then Nissan with Infiniti to carve out a pretty big share of the luxury and near-luxury markets.

Quickly, however, Acura had an issue.

Consumers knew the Legend. 
Consumers knew the Integra.
The strength of those product names surpassed the name of the brand or marque.

In short order, Acura alphabet-souped the names of their vehicles. While they still sell an Integra, their other offerings sound like a string of Lithuanian curse words. The TLX, ADX, RDX and MDX. I'd bet there aren't five people that understand Acura's Byzantine naming conventions.

Cars, though, aren't the point today.

The point is more personal for me.

About 10 years ago before I was officially fired from Nogilvy & dontMatter, I had an expensive breakfast with a friend who was no longer with the former behemoth's London office. 

She said to me, "George, don't worry about being fired.
Your brand is stronger than their brand."

That sort of topsy-turvy happens in all sorts of social organizations. From ad agencies, to law firms, to family businesses, to I suppose sports teams. (Back 100 years ago the Cleveland Indians were called the "Naps," after their star player/manager Napoleon Lajoie.) I predict the giant tumpian implosion will happen when someone in his misministration begins to overshadow his stench.

Sometimes, maybe often, a "product" becomes greater than the 
"brand."

When I realized this, I made a proposal to certain potentates at Nogilvy. 

Let me build "OgilvyStartup," I asked. And I listed a number of reasons why this made sense.

1. I'm attracting these clients anyway. Working as startups demand is a good discipline. All those attributes that fall under the nauseating rubric of "agile," is what I always did naturally. So, we could have a training, proving ground for a better way of working.

2. Growth and Innovation in the US ain't going to come from giant companies. It will come from start-ups. If you want cool account that almost inevitably will be famous, this is how you get them.

3. The US (at least pre-that-man) is a start up nation. Start ups and new business are an all-you-can-eat buffet.

4. If the start up fizzles, as 90-percent do, or decides they have no money for marketing, as 99-percent decide, you fire them after a year. If they listen and grow and "exit" and all that IPO chazarei, you move them into the mothership agency.

5. "OgilvyStartup" would be a great training ground for people with ambition. It would also allow the mothership to experiment with different ways of paying people. Currently agencies try to hire "the best and the brightest," and then give them a 1.77% raise every 36 months.

That all seemed reasonably arrogant to me.

But when an individual's "brand" is stronger than the entity they work for, about 99 times out of 100 the only thing the mothership (or the actual mother) thinks about is chastening or castrating or controlling that stronger individual.

They don't "free" or "encourage" or "build a system" around that stronger person. 

They eviscerate.

Today, I'm speaking macro-and-cosmologically here, much of the world has become a "gerontocracy." We are ruled in almost every aspect of our lives by old people, old norms, and old people named norm. 

The old are fine. I'm one of them. They only become a problem when they work to keep newcomers out, or poor or exiles. When they see everyone with the slimmest scintilla and ambition as a threat to their 12-rooms on Park and country place in Sag Harbor.

Meanwhile, Trump is nearing 80. (Age, IQ and pounds overweight.)
Putin is 72.
Xi is 71.

I'm not saying for a moment someone of advanced years can't be alive and vibrant. Warren Buffet was and is. And Bernard Baruch, advisor to half-a-dozen presidents, was said to have been teaching himself Latin at the age of 90. That should hic and haec your hoc.

"Let us drink, for we must die."

This is a long ramble really not on age but on squashing. On heels on foreheads. On repression. On bias. On I've got mine and I'm pulling up the ladder after me.

Well-washed and well-squashed.

The Greeks of course, more than 3000 years ago, had a myth about all this. The story of Procrustes and his bed. It's a story I think about a lot.

Theseus killed Procrustes. Before he even had time to put his pants on.

Procrustes had a stronghold on Mount Korydallos at Erineus. There were no hotels nearby. The hotel chain "The Red Doric Inn" hadn't yet opened. 

The gods set the rules. You had to welcome strangers into your home. You had to feed them. And keep them from your wife, sheep and daughters.

But Procrustes was a sicko.

He offered travelers a bed to spend the night. But once tucked in, he set to work on them with his smith's hammer. He'd stretch them to fit the bed or if they were too tall, he'd chop off their excess.  

This is how most social organizations work. 

Chop.
Chop.

Especially if your brand is bigger than their brand.