Buying In - (Page 40) 40 rob walker ice to the idea that marketing departments do not have full control over a particular brand’s core meaning still believe that someone does control it—the early adopters or alpha consumers or thought leaders. But it turns out that having the first say does not mean you get the final say. That’s why Tony Hawk is the most famous skateboarder of all time. He is about five years older than Templeton. Like Templeton, he is a skateboarder who went pro (joining Peralta’s Bones Brigade at the age of twelve, in fact). But unlike Templeton—and, more to the point, unlike some early adopters of skateboarding’s outlaw culture—he has not spurned the mainstream’s attention. He has done his spectacular skate tricks on every talk show you can think of and has endorsed dozens of products that have no particular link to skateboarding. He has a clothing line, and has been the star of a series of skateboard video games that were such an enormous success that they made him one of the best-paid athletes in the world. “There’s a fan base now that doesn’t necessarily want to participate,” Hawk has said. By that he means they don’t want to participate by actually skateboarding; they clearly do want to participate in the broader idea of this form of leisure and the group identity it seems to represent. They clearly want, in other words, to join the “community.” That isn’t a mistake or a fluke. It’s a key to understanding how symbols help us solve the problem of balancing individuality and belonging. Often they do so precisely because they have some version of the “projectability” that helped convert Hello Kitty from a meaningless drawing into a global icon. Every member of the community helps define the community.
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