How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding FROM THE PUBLISHER
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.
SYNOPSIS
Based on an extensive examination of the historical records of legendary iconic brands, Holt (marketing, Oxford University) demonstrates that brands become icons not by highlighting unique features, but by addressing acute cultural contradictions with myths conveyed through advertising. He builds a new cultural branding model that revises core marketing principles, and details these principles with case studies of major brands such as Mountain Dew and ESPN. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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