How brands become icons : the principles of cultural branding / Douglas B. Holt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Holt, Douglas B.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Brand name products.

Business names.

Popular culture.

Physical Description:

xiii, 265 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press, [2004]

Summary:

Stories of iconic brands like Coca-Cola, Harley-Davidson, and Volkswagen have become part of marketing lore. But Douglas B. Holt argues that these widely circulated stories miss the mark. Based on an extensive examination of the historical records of legendary iconic brands, Holt presents an entirely different model that will have significant implications for branding strategy. In this eye-opening book, Holt demonstrates that brands become icons not by highlighting unique features and benefits, but by staking out a provocative and valued position in the national culture. Iconic brands address acute cultural contradictions-and the widespread desires and anxieties they create-by "performing" myths. These simple stories, usually conveyed through powerful advertising, smooth over cultural contradictions and help people feel better about their identities.

To date, iconic brands have been built more on the intuitions of ad agency creatives than by purposeful strategies. How Brands Become Icons extracts the common principles behind these intuitions to build a new cultural branding model that dramatically revises core marketing principles including segmentation, targeting, positioning, brand equity, and brand loyalty. Using fascinating case studies of Snapple, Mountain Dew, Budweiser, ESPN, Corona, and other iconic brands, the book details these new principles and explains counterintuitive insights. Holt convincingly shows that iconic brands are built by focusing on culture, not products. To compete, managers will need to stop outsourcing their branding efforts and instead build "cultural activist" organizations from the ground up. Upending axioms that have dominated managerial thought for three decades, How Brands Become Icons challenges managers to rethink their assumptions about brand strategy.

Contents:

What is an iconic brand?

How is cultural branding different?

Targeting myth markets

Composing the cultural brief

Leveraging cultural and political authority

Managing brand loyalty as a social network

Co-authoring the myth

Advancing the myth

Branding as cultural activism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-249) and index.

ISBN:

1578517745

OCLC:

54415938