Brands that achieve the status of icons succeed because they forge a deep connection with the culture. In essence, they compete for culture share. The strategic focus is on what the brand stands for, and not how the brand performs. Icons are valued because, through them, people get to experience powerful myths.
The Making of an Icon
People have always needed myths. Simple stories with compelling characters and resonant plots, myths help us make sense to the world. They provide ideals to live by, and they work to resolve life’s most vexing questions. Icons are encapsulated myths. They are powerful because they deliver myths to us in a tangible form, thereby making them more accessible.
Icons are not just brands, of course. More often, they are people. We find icons among the most successful politicians – think of John F. Kennedy – artists and entertainers like Marylin Monroe, activists like Martin Luther King, and other celebrity figures, such as Princess Di. People feel compelled to make these icons part of their lives because, through them, they’re able to experience how powerful myths continually. Iconic brands operate similarly.
When a brand creates a myth, consumers come to perceive the myth as embodied in the product. So they buy the product in order to consume the myth and to forge a relationship with the author: the brand. When Nike’s core customers laced up their Air Jordan in the early 90’s, they tapped into Nike’s myth of individual achievement through perseverance.
Iconic brands embody not just the any myth but myths that attempt to resolve acute tensions people feel between their own lives and society’s prevailing ideology. And ideology, by its nature, presents challenging moral imperatives; it lays out the vision to which a community aspires. More often than not, in America at least, those
who win in myth markets are performing a myth of rebellion. Americans turn to those who stand up for their personal values instead of pursuing wealth and power. The most successful icons rely on an intimate and credible relationship with a rebel world: Nike with the African-American ghetto, Harley with outlaw bikers, Volkswagen with bohemian artists, Apple with cyberpunks.
Cultural Disruptions
A key element in Douglas B. Holt’s book is the concept of cultural disruption. As an ideology loses its relevance, people lose faith in its tenets. Experimentation ensues, historical ingredients are reworked, and society occurs, people are forced to adjust their aspirations and their views of themselves. Myths provide a powerful sense of structure at these junctures, and they grow up spontaneously around the emerging ideology, forming new myths markets. These are the moments when we see new icons take off and incumbents struggle to remain relevant.
How to build an Icon
- Target National Contradiction
Icons go after veins of intense anxieties and desires running through society, the psychological consequence of the national ideology. Icons necessarily speak to a mass audience.
- Create Myths that Lead Culture
Icons create charismatic visions of the world to make sense of confusing societal changes in much the same way as have Marylin and Elvis, JFK and Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs and Bart Simpson. Icons deliver myths that “repair” the culture when it’s particularly in need of mending.
- Speak with a Rebel’s Voice
Iconic brands draw on people who actually live according to alternative ideals. They understand the rebel’s point of view so well that they can speak with the rebel’s voice.
- Draw on Political Authority to Rebuild the Myth
Icons must be reincarnated when ideology ruptures because the value of their myth is erased. What remains intact as an artifact of the original brand, however, is its political authority.
- Draw on Cultural Knowledge
Getting Close to Culture
Managers must learn to anticipate new contradictions and to select the one that best aligns with the brand’s political authority. They must then choose to align with the appropriate rebel subculture and understand the rebel’s ethos deeply enough to construct a credible and evocative new myth.
Based on the book How Brands Become Icons, written by Douglas B. Holt and on the article What becomes an Icon Most? by Douglas B. Holt, that you can find on the HBR website
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Written by Loic Bonnaillie, http://bonnaillie.com , a blog on the best practices
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
If you liked this post, I recommend you to read:
%SHARE%No related posts.
La liste des entrées complémentaires est établie par le module d’extension YARPP.
type=pings Trackbacks For This Post