Our consulting practice, Mythology, is based on the idea that marketing is in a sense "belief management." How you and your organization interact and shape the values associated with your brand in collaboration with the marketplace - how you shape beliefs in an authentic way that lead to positive responses - is what marketing is all about.
The book How Brands Become Icons: The Principle of Cultural Branding by Douglass B. Holt reveals how brands emerge as various "authors" tell stories that involve the brand. Those authors could be customers, critics, culture industries (media), or other companies.
Brands are created when markers of the product are filled with customer experiences. The logo, packaging or design become the material markers that are filled with a history. This creates brand meaning that consumers use to associate with the specific brand. Without this history of customer experiences, the brand is empty and does not exist.
Brands that embody the the ideals that consumers admire become cultural iconic brands, brands that help the consumer to express who they are and who they want to be.
The leaders in this iconic horse race are well known in American consumer history and popular culture: Coca Cola, Budweiser, Nike, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson. Customers value these brands' stories largely for their identity value. Such iconic brands act as a vessel of self-expression and the brands are imbued with stories that consumers find valuable in constructing their identities.
The success of a brand is not built so much on advertising and traditional marketing capabilities anymore. Their power rests in large part on the brand myth that consumers can identify with. In order to satisfy the need to be a part of that myth, consumers will drink, eat and wear the brand.
Don't think that this brand mythology doesn't play into business-to-business scenarios as well. In past generations, an IT executive wanted to identify with the power of success of IBM; in more recent generations, many wanted to identify with the spunky independence and flexibility of the open source Linux movement.
With different generations come different myths that are appealing. How well a company is able to reposition and connect with more relevant myths can determine their long-term success - something IBM has actually done quite well by becoming an early supporter of open source technology.
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