vans
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Brandon Ball and the missing logo
After 13 years at Vans, Brandon Ball built Starch Creative around a simple question: would you recognize a brand if its name disappeared from the room?
Kevin "K.C." Clarke
Kevin "K.C." Clarke is a Los Angeles-based consumer brand marketer who now leads marketing at DITA Eyewear, the Aliso Viejo-headquartered luxury eyewear house whose frames are handmade in Japan. His career reads like a tour of the Southern California brand economy: Hurley and Vans in action sports, adidas and the Anaheim Ducks in sport and sponsorship, ZICO in beverage, then brand marketing leadership at golf-lifestyle label TravisMathew and VP of Marketing at car-care cult brand Chemical Guys. He holds a BS from Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business and an MBA from USC's Marshall School of Business. The through-line is a preference for brands with obsessive fans rather than merely large audiences - surfers, golfers, detailing enthusiasts, and now collectors of titanium and 18k gold optical frames.