Is your brand a rolling stone?

Out Of The Box

When Harley-Davidson celebrated its 100th anniversary in August 2003, more than 250,000 bikers rode into the brand's hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (population: 596,000) to pay homage to it. A dozen couples lined up to get married in the corporate headquarters' parking lot.

Milwaukee's archbishop conducted a special mass for Harley-Davidson riders, followed by a blessing for their bikes. Tears flowed as freely as the beer in 'hog heaven' once the celebrations kicked off.

Most marketers dream of building brands that have the ability to engage, enthrall, and emotionally move consumers as much as this noisy motorcycle. Indeed, they yearn to create brands that will outlive the consumer that uses them.

Yet, building a strong, compelling brand that spans decades of loyalty seems to be one of the hardest challenges companies face; usually, it's tough enough getting four straight quarters of brand growth.

In the last 10 years, researchers have tried to unravel what makes some brands super strong. The technique, it turns out, is more science and less serendipity.

For example, marketers agree that brands that tug at the emotional chords of consumers are more likely to loosen their purse strings. Roger Blackwell, professor of marketing at the Max. M. Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University recently revalidated the theory.

Blackwell is the co-author of Brands That Rock, which will be published in November 2003. A former disc jockey with sociologist leanings, Blackwell was intrigued by the success of pop stars who have fans across all age groups: Kiss, Elton John, the Rolling Stones.

In fact, when Blackwell heard that Aerosmith "" all the band members are aging baby boomers "" sold out their 2002 concert tour within hours, he wondered what the lessons for consumer brands were.

"Successful rock stars are not only good products, but are able to develop emotional connections with their market. We learnt from the music industry that to be a successful rock star, a person must be at least a 6 or a 7 on a 10-point scale in terms of product quality. However, it's not the quality of the product that determines success; what really counts is the emotional connection that these stars are able to make with their fans,'' says Blackwell.

However, few brands in the real world can pull off an emotional riff as well as Elton John. Smart brand-builders like P&G, Unilever, and Whirlpool may have profited by linking local emotions to global sales, but most others have suffered emotional breakdowns. More often than not brands sink into a mawkish swamp of treacle advertising when they clumsily try to tread a course through emotional terrain.

The problem is that while trying to connect emotionally with the consumer, brands fail to connect with the consumer's culture; not just the popular culture as seen from the surface, but the burning magma deep inside the core of society.

Said Douglas B. Holt, assistant professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School in a recent article titled 'What Becomes an Icon Most?' (Harvard Business Review, March 2003): "Iconic brands embody not just any myth, but myths that attempt to resolve acute tensions people feel between their own lives and society's prevailing ideology...The contradictions between ideology and individual experience produce intense desires and anxieties, fuelling the demand for myths.'' According to Holt, it is in these "myth markets'' "" and not product markets "" that brands compete in to become icons.

Blackwell cites Starbucks as an example. He was teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle and was happy to note that the University provided free Starbucks coffee to students who came to class on Saturday mornings at 8 am.

Yet, Blackwell was intrigued to find that many students preferred to stop at their favourite Starbucks and pay $ 3 or more for a cup of coffee and bring it to class, rather than getting it free on campus. When Blackwell asked one of the students why she would waste money on buying coffee she could get for free, he was told: "They would miss me at my regular Starbucks store if I didn't come in.''

Says Blackwell: "Starbucks has created the atmosphere and in-store feeling that goes along with the quality that is inherent in the physical product.'' The net result is that the consumer feels the store will miss her, when the reality is the other way round: she misses the regular Starbucks store where she is used to hanging out.

Therein lies the success of building brands that bond: the emotional connect follows automatically once the brand connects with the consumer's culture correctly. "Creating an emotional connection means understanding the culture in which the brand exists. A brand must reflect the culture as well as lead it,'' says Blackwell.

In other words, be like the Rolling Stones: more than 60 years old and still on top of the charts.

manjariraman@yahoo.com

(The columnist is a Boston-based management writer)