Crazy 90s marketing: Red Dog, No Fear, Diesel & Jones Soda
Red Dog, No Fear, Diesel, and Jones Soda each stood against something, and each sold attitude as much as product. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl walks through four 90s brands that broke the polished 80s mold, and why No Fear’s recent relaunch and Jones Soda’s growing pains show what happens when a brand gives up its spirit. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on the 90s, When Brands Stopped Giving a Shit.
Watch the full episode
Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl starts with Red Dog, Miller’s answer to wholesome lumberjack-and-craft beer imagery: a grumpy bulldog, a beer for a guy ready for a bar fight, and a tagline, “Uncommonly smooth,” that took a stance against something. It came from the “Plank Road Brewery,” the classic big-brewer trick, and it was successful.
No Fear did the same in clothing. While others sold performance or sophistication, No Fear sold aggressive clothing for extreme people, worn by boxers, skateboarders, and motocross racers. They were just T-shirts; they sold attitude. Calvin calls the brand’s recent relaunch a terrible decision that removed the only thing it had.
Diesel turned luxury advertising on its head, borrowing the visual language of posh 80s brands to mock them with dark, meta humor. It sold the morning after the party, not the party. Jones Soda broke soda’s inhuman consistency by putting customers’ photos on its labels, then lost some of its spirit when it grew too fast and switched to plastic bottles.
Highlights
Red Dog sold a grumpy, ready-for-a-fight attitude against wholesome beer branding.
No Fear sold attitude, not T-shirts, and its relaunch stripped that away.
Diesel mocked luxury by using luxury’s own visual language.
Jones Soda let customers become the label.
Growing too fast cost Jones Soda some of its equity.
Key insights
A stance needs something to stand against
Red Dog’s “Uncommonly smooth” and No Fear’s extreme-sports attitude worked because they defined themselves against the mainstream. A brand with nothing to push against has nothing to say.
Attitude can be the whole product
No Fear sold T-shirts, but people bought the attitude. Calvin’s read on the relaunch: remove the character, and there’s nothing left.
Turn the category’s language inside out
Diesel used the polish of luxury advertising to mock the people it usually flattered, and it sold the hangover instead of the party.
Scale can erode what made you different
Jones Soda’s you-are-the-label idea was something no one else did. Going too big, and changes like plastic bottles, threw away some of that equity.
Detailed analysis
Across all four, the throughline is that the distinctiveness came from a clear point of view, not the product itself. Beer, T-shirts, jeans, and soda are commodities; the attitude is what people paid for.
The cautionary half of the clip matters as much as the nostalgia. No Fear and Jones Soda both show that the risk to a distinctive brand often comes later, in a relaunch or a growth push that sands off the edge that made it work.
Conclusion
These 90s brands won by standing against something and selling an attitude people wanted to wear, drink, and display.
The lesson for brands now is the second half of the story: when you update or scale, protect the spirit that made you worth noticing.
Transcript
We then had Miller create Red Dog Beer. At this time, American loggers became these wholesome symbols of craft and American values and American individualism, all that kind of good, wholesome stuff. So then they created Red Dog. Red Dog’s attitude was for a guy who was ready to get into a fistfight in the bar, you know? It wasn’t happy. It had this grumpy bulldog on the can. Let’s see if I can pull this up here. Even their tagline was “Uncommonly smooth.” It’s inherently setting up a stance against something. “Premium beer from the Plank Road Brewery.” That’s the classic trick that large-scale domestic brewers use. It’s not from Miller, it’s from their Plank Road Brewery. But Red Dog was actually pretty successful. I love the look of it. It’s great. Just very much of that era.
I think one of the ones that everyone remembers and has kind of forgotten, though, is No Fear. No Fear clothing came out when all the other clothing brands in this era were focusing on performance or fashion, some kind of sophistication. You had maybe the Tommy Hilfigers of the world, that kind of stuff. No Fear came at it from: this is aggressive clothing for extreme people doing extreme sports. Boxers, skateboarders, motocross racers, all those people started repping these brands, and it was all about just selling attitude. They were just T-shirts. They sold attitude, though.
And this is such a great example. Maybe this will become more relevant later in this conversation, but they’re still around. No Fear still exists. They relaunched earlier this year, and you see this is their new look, No Fear Sport. And this is literally the headline here: “No Fear’s new logo proves brands are terrified to stand out.” Absolutely my thought when I saw this. Where’d the character go? Where’d the attitude go? That was the only thing they had. They removed the whole spirit of the brand with this update. Unbelievable. Terrible decision.
But okay, let’s keep talking about some other fun ones. Another one that was absolutely legendary was Diesel. Diesel Jeans. We all know Diesel. They were a luxury brand, but from the ’80s, luxury was all just posh, elegant, sophisticated, trying to do this kind of clean, upper-crust feel. Diesel came in and just adopted the visual language of all of those brands, turned it on its head, and attacked traditional advertising aesthetics, and it created this really awesome meta narrative within all of their work and made them super successful. Like this ad here, which is definitely one you would never see now. But it really set up this clear us versus them: here’s the fat cats who don’t get it, and we’re the cool kids who are just quietly judging them.
So, maybe not great for today’s market, but they had this whole attitude, and they really just went for it. I think everything became a really dark joke to them. All the typical luxury fans, they set them up as pompous blowhards. And I think the most interesting part about them: it often wasn’t about showing this elegant, beautiful world. They weren’t trying to sell you the idea that you were going to look beautiful at the party. They were trying to sell you the morning after, when you’ve got a hangover but you’re kind of reveling in the moment you had. That’s what they were focusing on. Super good, real fun. I don’t know where Diesel is these days. We’ll talk about the limited-time effect of some of these choices. But they were really good at showing how the real world really worked, and they made luxury clothes for those who get it, and nothing for those who don’t.
Apparently my YouTube stream is just having troubles today. We’ll just keep going. Might be getting a little stuttery. Sorry if you’re seeing some stuttering and slowdown on your end.
Okay, a couple more, just for fun. We all remember Jones Soda. This was another great stance against old ’80s corporate consumerism, consistency, all of that stuff. All soda brands were super consistent. They were kind of inhuman. They were polished. And Jones came in with this whole idea that you become the label. You submit photos to them, and you had a chance of it showing up on one of their labels. It became this constantly rotating label of art and photography. No one was doing anything like that, and it blew up.
They kind of screwed themselves when they tried going too big and started killing off some of their spirit. They switched over to plastic bottles. A lot of stuff happened where they threw away some of their equity, but they still exist. But such an awesome decision back then: you become the label. It’s great.