Businesses increasingly live with the twin realisation that building brands is both difficult and expensive on one hand and on the other the market equity of many brands seems far greater that the economic value they generate. Brand extension is the natural outcome of these two competing impulses both internal to the corporation and has generally very little to do with realities of the marketplace or consumer mindspace. Brand extensions are seen as a cheaper and less risky way launching new innovations and are not really about creating new brands. While the jury is still out on extensions there is general consensus that they usually fail or are at best moderately successful. Is low risk low return the unwritten future of brand extensions? Clearly seeking permission from the consumers is not working.
hen we pull out and look at what is creating wealth and value in the world it makes for fascinating discoveries. A few quick facts to get started, Christano Ronaldo’s legs got insured for $87 million while the whole Athens Olympics was insured for $44 million. The IPL is a $4 billion-plus enterprise in four years. What is Batman worth? Forbes list of wealthy fictional characters puts Bruce Wayne’s wealth at $7 billion. The way the world goes about creating wealth and value is dramatically changing and our current brand equity and financial models are woefully inadequate to explain the new world. More importantly the culture industry are the new marketer’s. We need to learn from them if we want to leverage and extend our brand successfully. They have in my opinion unparalleled ability to create brand value, franchise that value, create desire and conversation around it, prequels and sequels, merchandize and engagement, all that brand marketing is know for. Take the James Bond franchise as an example, or Batman, or Harry Potter, take the God of War game, etc and we find great examples of brand extension and leverage creating great economic and cultural capital.
So what does the culture industry know that we don’t know? This can be quite a long list, let me highlight a couple of key points.
1. People don’t buy what we do or how we do what we do. People “buy into” why we do it. The most successful people, brand and ideas in the world are those which invest their time and money in creating a compelling narrative around why they do what they do, simply put Big brands are brands with big agendas, not with big marketing budgets, because once the consumer has bought into your agenda you have tremendous permission to enter his life — look at Apple, Dove, Nike, each with a compelling agenda and a very successful case history of extending their brands across the consumers if spectrum.
2. Branding is nothing but asset creation, the culture industry understands assets, they are able to see the greater value of the asset and do not get limited by product, form, context, So for example Batman is an asset, you can make a movie, write a comic, create a game, develop merchandise, open cafes, have a television series, potentially develop a super hero training program, the big ideas are in life and not in ads.
When we are bought to be used in kitchens and bathrooms, we have to constantly wonder if we have permission to go the next room, but when we create a story that’s bigger than ourselves we don't need any permission, we are already invited in.
The author is founder, Religious
