2. What is an iconic brand?
A powerful cultural symbol.
Brand champions an ideology that resonates, that people
care about, and so they use the brand in their everyday lives,
an important component of their identities.
Because iconic brands play such an important role for
consumers, they have very strong and durable brand loyalty,
and are amongst most loved and respected brands.
3. Some brands become iconic simply because
they provide much “Better Mousetraps”
4. But many iconic brands are not better mousetraps.
Rather they are cultural innovators.
7. Ads: pouring ¼ moisturizing cream into bar
Mind share: gentle, luxurious
8. Users
benefits
PRODUCT
quality emotions
personality
A brand is a set of emotion-laden, distinctive, relevant
associations in customer’s minds
9. Mindshare branding
1950s Roots: Unique Selling Proposition
Trout and Ries: Capturing mental real estate
Became conventional one-size-fits-all model for MNCs
P&G, Unilever, Coke, Henkel, Nestle, etc
Major ad agencies followed suit
Academics formalize and diffuse via MBA
Dominated marketing since 1980s
10. 1990s: added emotional benefits
BRAND DNA or ESSENCE
FUNCTIONAL EMOTIONAL
BENEFITS BENEFITS
11. Complicated
Unwieldy
Version
problem-solution Megaperls (german)
Orientation Longterm Color Technology
Gel
Cleanliness Protection
Experience Recommendation
Innovation (from generation to
generation)
Skin Care
well being Superior Cleanliness trust / Omnipresence
(internal care) security
Characteristic
and Care
Tradition
Perfume (smell social recognition /History
of cleanliness) (external care) Partly
Environmental Mainstream authoritarian
friendly orientation Family external
values representation
TheCulturalStrategyGroup
12. Okay for daily stewardship.
But mindshare strategies
cannot build iconic brands.
three problems.
14. Baby Boomers Enter the 1980s
“Sixties
Generation” middle-class came of age
advocating progressive ideals about society and the
environment
TheCulturalStrategyGroup
15. Political Shift Fuels Cultural Tension
The “Reagan Revolution”: antithesis of Sixties ideology dominated
Capitalism over environmental and humanitarian values; greed is good
ideology; aggressive militaristic posturing
Left-of-center baby boomers become deeply alienated
Created powerful desire for countervailing challenger to advocate for liberal
societal-environmental ideals, taking on Reaganism
TheCulturalStrategyGroup
16. Enter Ben & Jerry’s
Advanced humanitarian business
ideology
Source material:
-back-to-the-land hippie subculture
- Yippie political prankster media stunts
17. What’s The Doughboy Afraid of?
When Pillsbury tries to use market
power to shut Ben & Jerry’s out of
marketplace
Cohen responds with a provocative
prank that captured the liberal baby-
boomer imagination
18. Ben & Jerry’s Vs. Reagan’s Cold War
Guerilla campaign
and new product
launch receives
national coverage on
all major networks
20. Rainforest Crunch vs. Slash-and-Burn
Farming in the Amazon
Leverages media wave covering
rainforest activist Chico Mendes
assassination in 1989
Launch reported on all major television
networks and news dailies
28. Typical Abstract Adjective Strategy
MOUNTAIN DEW Positioning (circa 1993)
You can have the most thrilling, exciting, daring
experience but it will never compete with
the exhilarating experience of a Mountain Dew.
29. Leads to Strategic Black Box
Functional +
Emotional
Benefits Brand
Archetypes Expressions
Brand
Personality
Strategy is too vague to make effective decisions between good and bad
brand expressions; it is not doing what strategy is supposed to do.
30. Cultural Strategy provides specific
direction on brand expressions
Functional +
Emotional
Benefits Cultural Brand
Archetypes Strategy Expressions
Brand
Personality
31. Cultural Branding Laboratory
ACADEMIC RESEARCH (30+) CONSULTING (60+)
Budweiser Coca-Cola
Volkswagen Converse
Snapple Microsoft Windows
Mountain Dew
Corona
MINI
Mountain Dew
Mastercard
Harley-Davidson Jack Daniel’s
ESPN Sprite
Levi’s Vitaminwater
Nike Friskies
Marlboro Fancy Feast
Jack Daniel’s Amazon Kindle
Hyundai
Patagonia
Ben & Jerry’s
Starbucks
Planet Green
Tango Georgia Coffee
Cazadores
32.
33.
34. Modern Quest for Meaning and Identity
Religions Ideology
Tribes
Nations Culture =Idealized Stories
Communities
Subcultures
Myths
Life Story Ideal Self
Rely on myths
- Interpret the world
- moral anchors
Identity Project - community and status
35. Who authors modern myths?
Films
Television
Politics
Sport
Music
Movements
Brands
36. People (and other cultural “actors” such as brands) that perform the myth that
society most “needs” at a particular historical moment become icons.
37.
38. Iconic communications drove both
functional + emotional benefits
Resonance, Identification
Best tasting Makes me happy
Most refreshing Makes me optimistic
Most invigorating Makes me feel good
39. If we reverse engineer..
how would we describe
the strategy that led to
these ads?
41. Media
obsessed
with
rioting
Politics
becomes
police
crackdowns
42. Media filled with disturbing
images of Vietnam war
Sparks huge protests,
also dominates media
43. Media
imagined
black men
from the ‘hood
as the nation’s
nightmare
44. Brand responds with myths that bring to life
the ideology that consumers demand
Coke’s Utopian Humanitarian Ideology
Drinking a Coke is a moment of communion with the world—a pause that
not only refreshes, but that also allows us to feel our common humanity
with peoples very different than us. Drinking a Coke produces a profound
sort of happiness that comes from integrating our life with disparate others,
rather than experience life as isolated individuals.
Coke embodies this utopian humanitarian ideology because, time and
again, the brand (and company) has inspired its customers to imagine a
world in which the most troubling inhumanities and social inequalities can
be overcome if only each of us acts every day to make it so. When the
world has problems, we have come to rely on Coke to inspire us and to
take action.
45.
46. Red Ocean Branding
BRANDS DUKE IT OUT WITHIN CATEGORY’S
CULTURAL ORTHODOXY
Benefits trench warfare
Emotion words slugfests
Chasing generic trends
Clichéd ideology
54. Historical Change
Cultural Orthodoxy
Ideological
Opportunity
Social
Disruption
Source Material
Subculture. Media Myth. Brand Assets.
TheCulturalStrategyGroup
55.
56. Historical Change
Cultural Strategy
ideology
myth
cultural codes
TheCulturalStrategyGroup
63. Better Mousetraps competition fades
Leveraged emerging discipline of biomechanics
Brooks developed kinetic wedge
Asics introduced dual density midsoles
Early technical advances provided quantum leaps in
performance, but soon became incremental
Nike Air barely noticed in late Seventies
68. Nike champions competitive runners’
ideology as antidote
Ideology
Transcend barriers with
Combative Solo Willpower
Cultural Codes
Runners “backstage”
training by themselves
in terrible weather with
great cheer + determination
69. Now what?
After casuals flop, basketball
Cultural
Strategy
Group
72. Code innovation #1
dramatize ideology outside professional athlete subculture
Code innovation #2
useCultural
extreme disadvantage contexts to set up myth of transcendence
Strategy
Group
73. Mythologize ideology in the ‘hood
Subculture: harshest place in USA, impossible to succeed
Myth: if you embrace the right ideology, you can achieve
The American Dream even in the very worst circumstances
79. Historical Change
Cultural
Orthodoxy
Cultural
Tension
creates
Ideological
Opportunity
Cultural Strategy
Ideology-myth-cultural codes
Social Disruption
Source Material
Subcultures-Media Myths-Brand Assets
82. Social Disruption: Demographic Explosion
Creates Craft Segment
Early 90s—first generation to grow up with college-
educated parents comes of age
For upper-middle class “bourgeois-bohemians” (Bobos),
huge pent-up demand for new products and services that
conveyed cultural sophistication
Food/drinks were bulls-eye
84. Red Ocean Branding
BRANDS DUKE IT OUT WITHIN CATEGORY’S
CULTURAL ORTHODOXY
Benefits trench warfare
Emotion words slugfests
Chasing generic trends
85. Social Disruption II:
Cultural Sophistication Migrates to Work
New professional work ideology:
Creative inventive work, making “insanely great” stuff
86. But few did. Routine work in stressful organizations was the norm. And
they make big bucks so they can’t walk away..
They can only dream of another life.
Cultural Tension = The ache of the Bobo..
87. Historical Change
Cultural Orthodoxy
Cultural
Tension
=
Ideological
Opportunity
Social
Disruption
Source Material
Subculture. Media Myth. Brand Assets.
88. Popular articles on avocational connoisseurship
e.g., starting a boutique organic farm
TheCulturalStrategyGroup
89. Gathered Subculture Source Materials
to Curate Brand Story
COMMUNITY OF AMATEURS
Stubbornly independent renegades who
opted out of careers to passionately pursue
avocations, allowing them absolute freedom
to turn work into creative inventive
expression
Don McClung
29” single-speed mountain bike pioneer
92. Historical Change
Cultural Orthodoxy
Cultural
Tension
=
Ideological
Opportunity
Social
Disruption
Source Material
Subculture. Media Myth. Brand Assets.
93. Cultural Strategy (summary)
New Belgium is a community of pastoral amateurs with many
avocations, including brewing beer. We celebrate quixotic playful
exploration. Pastoral amateurs investigate their chosen domain with
intensity. But this isn’t a masculine conquest. Our approach is
communal, not competitive. We prefer childlike innocence to jaded
professionalism. This is a playground, not a frontier.
We champion wildly non-instrumental investments of time. We
embrace brash iconoclasm. Pastoral amateurs will take whatever time
it takes to learn what needs learning, pursue the paths of inquiry that
are open, experimenting to get things right, attending to the details.
101. Cultural Strategy
Embrace 3rd wave’s celebration of woman’s body and
sexuality
Challenge patriarchal scientific approach to women and
their bodies
Take on category taboos
102.
103.
104. Results
UK 55% sales increase
Germany 45%
USA 80%
Radio only 35%
106. MuchMusic USA
“Me too” imitation of MTV
No reputation
Extremely low awareness
amongst youth target
Poor production values
Very limited marketing budget
107. Cultural Seeding
Efficient and compelling brand communication by
provocatively engaging mass media discourse with brand
ideology
• Pick the right discourse
• Pick the right tension within the discourse
Ideological flashpoint
• Use “cultural seeding” to provocatively assert brand
ideology in the discourse
108. Cultural Jujitsu
Special case of cultural seeding
Leverage the power of the category leader to sharply and
efficiently assert point-of-view
109. Incumbent’s Cultural Achilles Heel
Mid 1990s: Abandoned youth
rebellion against bourgeois
adulthood
Instead, celebrated the
teenybopper dream of the rich
and beautiful lifestyle
• Undressed, Sorority Life, Room
Raiders
• Brittney, Paris, Jessica Simpson
Great ideological opportunity
110. Populist Prankser
New anti-bourgeois myth: celebrate rude sloth
Use cultural jamming to mock MTV’s bourgeois tastes
Extend to other points of engagement in discourse
Low fidelity to show up MTV’s slick production
124. Shifts in category ideology
create massive cultural opportunities
Society changes over time, often seismically, transforming
the key ideologies that structure your category..
These ideological transformations challenge category
conventions, devaluing incumbents and creating
opportunities for new and restaged brands.
This is a far more important innovation driver than generic
trends
125. Winners become new iconic brands
Successfully responding to historical changes that matter
to category consumers is what transforms a brand into a
cultural icon.
Iconic brands champion a category-relevant ideology that
resonates powerfully in people’s everyday lives.
Which acts as a powerful halo shaping product quality and
benefit perceptions.
126. Brands take advantage with resonant
expressions, not declarations
Iconic brands don’t tell people what they stand for.
Rather, they create myths—they act in compelling ways to
dramatize their ideology.
They tell stories with implicit ideological meaning (myths)
that make an emotional connection with the audience.
128. And brand management
Your brand’s meaning and value is to be found in people’s everyday
lives, in the media, in word-of-mouth, not in positioning statements or
white board exercises or brand metrics reports.
Your brand’s opportunities move with history. Game-changing
opportunities emerge from structural changes in society and culture
bearing down on your category. These opportunities can be
researched, but require new kinds of cultural analysis. They are not to
be found in trend reports!
To do cultural branding requires that managers embrace new ways of
doing research, strategy, and creative development.
129. Cultural branding is a systematic craft.
With practice & perseverance,
you can do it too!
