Godzilla: An Allegory for Branding

At first there is darkness. Then the beating of a drum or a gong, like the alarum of some far-off army. Metal plates grate together, planes split the air, the dragon shrieks. The creature is terrifying. The only intimation of it that we see in the first 15 minutes of the movie are glimpses of a tail whirling in the steam-pool of Tokyo Bay. So when the scene of it barreling up the Tama River snapped on, I almost jumped. The film came out in 2016, and the CGI is so sharp that the monster looked massive in grotesque detail: Spikes the shape of pineapple crowns serrating its back. The bald face resembling a dinosaurian buzzard with lidless eyes. The hulking stoop that lowers its head snarling down to the streets of frenzied crowds. And its wattle, like a string of steaks swinging back and forth, disgorging blood with every step.

This creature, as you know, is Godzilla. But which Godzilla? The simple answer is Shin Godzilla, the latest incarnation of one of two divergent perspectives of the Godzilla story: the Japanese versus the US American traditions. (We’ll get to that later.) The more complex answer is that many Godzillas exist within one Godzilla brand. At Mightily, we’re a brand-advertising agency — ergo, brand geeks. As we said in a previous article, we tell our clients that we don’t create their brand. Their brand already exists. We focus on core messaging that evokes the truth about them and stakes out their personality. Among our company axioms are that we treasure brands and champion boldness and defend the high ground. And we mean it. Yet Godzilla seems to do the opposite. Watch a slew of Godzilla films and you may realize that they make no qualms about the fact that Godzilla could stand for anything at all. So why is the Godzilla franchise one of the most accessible brands in the world?

Well, first, let’s backtrack for a moment. The Godzilla story goes back at least to 1954, when the Japanese film company TOHO Studios produced the first Godzilla (they called it “Gojira”) movie, almost a decade after the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan. As US Americans, most of us are familiar with a certain America-themed history of the bombings — the Manhattan Project, the Japanese defeat, sailors kissing nurses in Times Square on V-J Day. But it can be sobering to revisit that history from the Japanese perspective: The atomic fireball raised temperatures in Nagasaki and Hiroshima to 4,000 degrees Celsius. The blast sent out shock-waves faster than the speed of sound. The heat etched stones with the shadows of the dead. Black rain of radioactive fallout drizzled upon cities turned to charnel houses.

To US Americans, the bombings meant the end of World War II. To the Japanese, the bombings meant annihilation from the sky. After Japan surrendered in August 1945, US General Douglas MacArthur ruled like the viceroy of Japan until 1952. MacArthur convened war crimes trials for Japanese military leaders, dismantled Japanese business conglomerates, and imposed a new constitution on Japan — all while the US continued to test hydrogen bombs in the South Pacific. In 1954, the explosion of a US hydrogen bomb over the Bikini Atoll contaminated a Japanese fishing boat, Lucky Dragon No. 5. During the US occupation of Japan, the US muzzled any criticism of its nuclear policy. But the occupation was over by 1954, and TOHO produced Gojira, which opens with a Japanese freighter floating atop a luminous pool in the ocean and detonating into flames. “I’m telling you, the sea just exploded!” one survivor says.

Far below that luminous pool, emerging from “sealed cavities deep in the ocean,” a 165-feet-tall monster strides out of the waves. This Godzilla will hardly terrify viewers today, accustomed as we are to slicker special effects than postwar film studios could manage. But it caught the attention of Raymond Burr, the Canadian-American actor who starred in the 1956 US American remake of Gojira. The title of this one? Godzilla — King of the Monsters. The US producers reedited Gojira so that Burr, as a US reporter, narrates the story of Godzilla trampling buildings and snapping power lines in Tokyo. Omitting some of the more philosophical lines that underpin the original, King of the Monsters is mostly a schlocky monster-movie, bowdlerizing the fear of atomic war. (In Gojira, a zoologist posits that “underwater H-bomb tests” ruptured Godzilla’s caves, allowing it to escape. “Godzilla was baptized in the fire of the H-bomb and survived,” he says. In other words, Godzilla is the apotheosis of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings combined into one eldritch horror.)

Although Godzilla was spawned from a trauma that appears to be pretty culturally idiosyncratic, it has since morphed into a brand that upholds endless iterations. Japan is the only country to ever suffer a nuclear assault, so you might think that the agony it underwent wouldn’t carry a ton of universal appeal. But no. Godzilla was a metaphor for nuclear bombs that the US dropped on Japan, yet people in the US loved Burr’s version of Godzilla. Which makes some sense. We’ve long identified with samurai movies because they kinda feel like Westerns. To us, Godzilla is just blockbuster destruction that continues to get play. Look at IMDB, which lists over 200 Godzilla movies and TV shows and video games of Godzilla’s robotic double, Mechagodzilla; the Saturday morning cartoons of Godzilla and Godzuki; the 1998 flick with Matthew Broderick where Godzilla lays eggs under Madison Square Garden; the monsterverse battle royale that came out last year (also titled King of the Monsters) where Godzilla dukes it out with other mon-stars — Mothra (a giant moth), Rodan (a fire-dragon), and King Ghidorah (a winged hydra). And Godzilla is globally recognizable as a Pokemon character, a Russian nesting doll, and a 23-feet-tall statue made of straw. The list goes on. And on and on and on.

Throughout the years, Godzilla has protected Tokyo, destroyed Tokyo, saved Earth, ransacked Earth, fought monsters, teamed up with monsters. The plots change according to what society fears at the moment. During the Cold War, Godzilla killed red foes. (Wink, wink.) As pollution became a global concern, Godzilla faced off with an enemy made of sludge and smog. Even within Shin Godzilla, the dinosaur-buzzard grows four times in size, muscling up into a titanic reptile with scales carbuncled into volcanic ash that leaves a trail of smoke in its wake. Trace amounts of radiation drip from its teeth as it scythes down the Tokyo skyline with purplish lasers. We see or we’re told that it can also sprout wings, make its body smaller, spew fire from its mouth, tap into its radar capabilities, or use its fins to serve as heat-vents for its internal cooling system. The monster at the end of the movie is way different than the monster at the beginning of the movie. Because it seems like this Godzilla, like the brand, can shape-shift into any form it wants to take. 

The allure of this attitude toward branding (and moviemaking) may be that Godzilla tends to reflect the culture of the viewer at the time. We’re attracted to brands because they provide us with strong emotional connections, so if any consistent truth threads its way through the Godzilla universe, it’s that consequences unfold with unstoppable velocity. Godzilla’s destructive power can be pro-human, or anti-human, or indifferent, but we respond to the unending permutations of that power because we have all internalized the visceral gut-check of paying too steep a price before. Godzilla is that price exceeded beyond imagination — and the brand continues to compel our imaginations because anyone can relate to it in some way. At Mightily, we believe that brands that champion truth find success. We’re specific about the truth that we’re communicating. Godzilla is broad enough with how it wields its truth that it’s achieved global appeal. We chat with your frontal lobes. Godzilla gets your instincts pumping. Either way, both approaches reach into truths buried deep in everyone’s lizard brains.

Special thanks to Alisha Wheatley and Jenny Sauer for insights and concepting and Jason Lee for art direction.