You can always get what you want - merchandising the Rolling Stones brand

© Simon Poulter 2021

As someone lucky enough to have seen the Rolling Stones more times than any other band, and on a beautiful, sunlit morning in November 2016, was amongst the first punters through the door of New York's Industria to see their Exhibitionism showcase, you could say I’m a fan. A trawl of my T-shirt drawer reveals a disproportionate number of garments bearing the famous tongue motif, easily the most famous piece of iconography in rock’n’roll history. While it will never compete with a clothing logo like, say, Ralph Lauren's Polo, the Stones preside over a brand that, it would appear, has limitless application. 

This week they've added it to confectionary, with the launch of Rolling Stones-branded chocolate bars, available for £5.95 a pop (plus £3.95 for COVID-friendly home delivery) from the band's substantial online store. Should you be so inclined, you can purchase a bar of Brown Sugar (milk chocolate) or - wait for it - Cherry Red (dark chocolate infused with cherries). There is, now, literally nothing that tongue logo won’t appear on, a trade I have willingly engaged in, given my aforementioned T-shirt collection, the socks, the limited edition Moleskine notebook and, naturally, the super deluxe edition box set reissues, like last year’s Goats Head Soup. 

Undoubtedly, I am the Stones’ target market, and partly who they had in mind last September when they opened their own “flagship” store at No.9 Carnaby Street in London. Effectively an extension of the merchandising stands you’ll see at their live shows, ‘RS No.9 Carnaby’ is an Aladdin’s Cave of Stones stuff, all bearing that tongue, and fitted out in ‘Stones Red’, now a registered Pantone colour matched to that logo. Given that Carnaby Street would normally be one of London’s biggest tourist attractions (smart marketing in the early 2000s transformed it from the somewhat shabby cove of novelty tat shops it was when I used to visit the Smash Hits offices at 52-55 in the mid-1980s), you could say that even this outlet is further evidence of the Stones’ business smarts.

Along with the limitless racks of Stones-branded clothing, ‘RS No.9 Carnaby’ will sell you tongue-branded Baccarat Crystal wine glasses (£245) and matching decanter (£535), chiffon scarves (£350), a water bottle (£30) and even an umbrella (£25). Actually, the Carnaby Street store was a tad limited when we visited last October, but then this is where retail wonks like to get into the world of “brand experiences”, whereby consumers “engage” with a brand, as opposed to just shop. Think of Apple Stores where everything from the layout to the staff is designed to the Nth degree to exude the company's considerable brand values as much as flog you things.

However, retailing is only one tip of the Rolling Stones business iceberg, which includes the band’s recording, publishing, touring and sponsorship entities. They are, in essence, every bit a corporate brand, and the lips-and-tongue is as powerful an emblem as the logos of Apple, Nike, McDonalds, Mercedes, Coca-Cola or Volkswagen. But, then, the Stones have long been rock’s most successful corporate bands. Such is their endurance on the world stage that, beyond chocolate and branded umbrellas, they remain one of music’s most profitable touring forces. Their No Filter tour, which commenced in 2017 but was postponed last year due to the coronavirus, has so far booked over $415 million at the box office; their 2005 A Bigger Bang Tour remains the fourth highest grossing concert series of all time, trousering $688 million. By the time No Filter resumes, the Stones will have a combined age of 306 (drummer Charlie Watts reaches his 80th birthday in June). Mick Jagger is said to have amassed a net worth of $360 million, with Keith Richards a little way behind on $340 million. Most of this wealth has been generated by business acumen. 

The common thought is that Jagger’s uncompleted course in accounting at the London School of Economics in the early 1960s made him the fiscal brains of the operation, but it probably owes more to Prince Rupert Loewenstein, the Bavarian count who was their business manager for almost 40 years. His legacy (he died in 2014) is that the Stones are one of the most smartly-managed companies in music - even to the extent that they exist as a Dutch “BV” (besloten vennootschap or private limited company - said to be a tax-friendly arrangement), and hold annual company meetings every year in Amsterdam, a ready source of chuckles, given the city's notorious recreational delights.

Central to all of this has been that logo. What has become one of the most lucrative emblems of all time was the result of a £50 commission from Jagger to art student Jon Pasche in 1970 to produce a poster for their European tour that year. After rejecting the first couple of designs, Jagger suggested that Pasche produced something witty that combined the simplicity of the Shell oil logo with the Hindu deity Kali for further inspiration (which actually provided the emphasis on a mouth and tongue - not, as was assumed, a conscious effort to replicate Jagger’s own prominent lippage).

The tongue made its eventual debut on the back cover of the Stones’ Sticky Fingers album in 1971, and has been part of the band’s visual language ever since. According to one intellectual property lawyer it has earned “hundreds of millions of pounds”. Pasche, on the other hand, says he probably only earned a few thousand pounds from his design, eventually selling the copyright in 1982 for just £26,000. Still, though, it has become emblematic of a form of brand marketing that students of such dark arts should and will be examining for years. Merchandising has always been a core part of rock bands' money-making, but few have taken it to the industrial levels of brand exploitation as the Rolling Stones. And they've done it with one of the most controversial and irreverent pieces of corporate imagery ever created.

Band logos have always held a fascination for me. As a schoolboy, it was fashionable to emboss the names of rock bands on the canvas, army-surplus shoulder bags that everyone carted around when I was 13. Bands like Genesis, Steely Dan, Yes and Rush generated a weird form of fan loyalty via their logos, which would be painstakingly scrawled in biro on such bags. No one, though, has ever come close to monetising a graphic identity quite like the Stones. Any band can produce T-shirts, mugs and even sleepwear, but only one band can get away with a £500 decanter or, now, a six quid bar of chocolate. It seems you can always get what you want, for the right price, that is.