That’s why today it makes more sense to manage for anarchy. Companies—whether they acknowledge it or not—no longer own their brands. They make them; they distribute them, and they promote them, but ultimately consumers decide what they mean. Rather than issuing “cease-and-desist orders” and hope for the best, perhaps it’s time to plan proactively for a communications strategy that syncs with the horizontal revolution.

In the “Mad Men” days (and lasting for a few decades beyond) where large advertising agencies ruled, an enormous amount of power was concentrated in the hands of a relatively few organizations such as Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, Young & Rubicam, Doyle Dane Bernbach, etc. Many of these companies or their successors such as Publicis and Saatchi & Saatchi are still around and going fairly strong, but the competitive landscape has changed dramatically since the days when a “campaign” for a client with deep pockets consisted of a series of clever television commercials that were strategically placed on large broadcasting networks over a period of time.

Even these august mega-agencies fully recognize that today a client expects them to touch customers on a huge variety of channels in addition to tried-and-true paid media. The problem is that many of the places that people go to learn about the world – and about what to buy – don’t work on the paid media model. That means that communications are not so much controlled in a “top down” manner by huge companies. Instead they are “bottom up” and horizontal, as everyday consumers decide what, where and when they will tune in.

These fundamental shifts in the marketing landscape contribute to the new reality, where corporate identity gets crowdsourced.

So how does a brand achieve breakthrough? Through brand meaning.

Even after decades of brand equity research, most measurement systems capture only a small set of fairly objective brand characteristics (such as favorability, top-of-mind salience, and uniqueness) to describe the market value of a brand. These qualities are important, but they fall a bit short when they try to explain why an Apple devotee will camp out in front of a store for days to await the release of a new iPhone model, or why thousands of people have their favorite brand logos burned into their skin as permanent tattoos.

For customer-facing products, a brand obtains marketplace significance as it embeds itself in consumer culture. Strong brands “matter” to their users and the worlds in which they reside; they provide meanings that people need to make sense of their lives. The raw material for these stories often emanates from events in mass culture that are well beyond the brand’s control. Harley-Davidson, for example, benefited tremendously from the famed riots in Hollister, California, in 1957, which the movie The Wild Ones starring Marlon Brando made famous.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Michael Solomon, author of The New Chameleons: Connecting with Consumers Who Defy Categorization 

The Blake Project’s brand equity measurement system is comprehensive, measuring each of the five drivers of customer brand insistence – awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection – along with other factors such as brand vitality, brand loyalty, brand personality and brand associations. Contact us for more on brand equity measurement

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“You complete me”

Our use of consumption information to define the self is especially important when we have yet to completely form a social identity, such as when we have to play a new role in life. Adolescent boys, for example, may use “macho” products such as cars and cigarettes to bolster developing masculinity; these items act as a “social crutch” during a period of uncertainty about their new identity as adult males.

Or, think of the insecurity many people feel when they start college or reenter the dating market after they’ve exited a long-term relationship. Symbolic self-completion theory suggests that people who have an incomplete self-definition tend to complete this identity when they acquire and display symbols they associate with that role.

A study of MBA students carefully chronicled the markers of “executive success” that these managers-in-training displayed, such as luxury watches, fancy briefcases, and the like. Sure enough, the researchers found that those students who scored lower on measures of actual achievement (GPA, number of interviews, etc.) were more likely to sport these products. In another study that hits a bit closer to home, less-accomplished professors (in terms of number of publications, etc.) were more likely to hang a large number of diplomas, certifications, and other badges of scholarly achievement on their office walls.

Some years ago – back when it was still something of a news story that sizeable numbers of young women were flooding into management roles — I conducted several studies when I was on the faculty at New York University to explore how role insecurity related to choices of  “appropriate professional apparel.”  I was motivated by the anxiety my female MBA students expressed to me about whether the clothing they wore to work (largely on Wall Street) would send the appropriate signals.

At that time, most of them chose the safe route. They dressed as male clones in very severe, dark suits – but they weren’t happy about it because they felt they had to sacrifice their femininity in order to succeed in a man’s world. This tension perseveres today, especially in the wake of the sexual harassment scandals we encounter in fields from politics and business to entertainment and the arts.

My research revealed an interesting anomaly: Although in most contexts we expect younger people to be the fashion trendsetters, in a business context the opposite was true. Using a sample of over 50,000 readers of a female executive magazine, we found instead that older, more experienced women were more likely to endorse a wide range of styles they felt were appropriate to wear to work. Younger, less-experienced women are more likely to rely upon external cues such as professional clothing to guide self-definition. Like the anxious women I saw in my Manhattan classroom, the newbies were much more likely to believe that only a very constricted set of styles (essentially female versions of the male banker’s suit) were OK.

This compensatory process is important, because it implies that it’s novices rather than experts who are more likely to acquire products that are stereotypically linked to a role. That’s a bit counterintuitive, perhaps – but this relationship can hold important marketing ramifications. If you provide products and services to people who need them to master some kind of skill, whether soccer or navigating the dating market or decorating a home (or body), your most attractive prospects may well be customers who are less adept rather than more experienced. Or at the least these buyers are the ones who will value the value-added of the expertise you can offer.

In research I conducted with professional wardrobe consultants, I identified this two-pronged structure. One set of women who paid these experts to organize their closets and shop for them had a clear idea of the image they wanted to project; they just didn’t have the time to procure the props and costumes themselves. The other set used these consultants in an entirely different way; they wanted them to dictate what they should buy because they lacked the self-confidence to choose for themselves. So, mea culpa – I created a dichotomy to describe the function these experts performed. Legs versus Head.

“Clothes (and Other Stuff) Make the (Wo)Man”

So, it seems that my female students and their sisters rely upon the signals they glean from their clothing to define their professional role. More generally, to what extent do the products we buy influence how we define ourselves?

Social scientists who study relationships between thoughts and behaviors increasingly turn to the theory of embodied cognition for answers. A simple way to explain this perspective is that “states of the body modify states of the mind.” In other words, our behaviors and observations of what we do and buy shape our thoughts, rather than vice versa. Yes, we buy what we are. But we also are what we buy, and that’s a whole other topic.

One of the most powerful illustrations of embodied cognition is the notion that our body language actually changes how we see ourselves. In one of the most widely viewed TED talks ever, a social psychologist discusses how power posing (standing in a confident way even if you don’t feel confident) affects brain activity. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s campaign to encourage women to “lean in” conveys the same idea. This research is highly controversial, but it at least hints at the idea that what we do influences what we feel, rather than vice versa.

The embodied cognition approach is consistent with consumer behavior research that demonstrates how changes in self-concept can arise from usage of brands that convey different meanings. Indeed, a pair of researchers used the term enclothed cognition in their work that showed how the symbolic meaning of clothing changes how people behave. In one study they asked respondents to wear a lab coat, which people associate with attentiveness and precise work. They found that subjects who wore the lab coat displayed enhanced performance on tasks that required them to pay close attention. But they also introduced a twist: When respondents were told the garment was in fact a painter’s coat rather than a doctor’s lab coat, the effects went away. In other words, the respondents interpreted the symbolic meaning of the clothing and then altered their behavior accordingly.

It’s tempting to point out that a study your humble author conducted more than 30 years ago on the “dress for success” phenomenon found similar results for students in job interview settings. In perhaps the best Ph.D. dissertation ever written (at least in your author’s opinion), male job candidates who wore professional attire acted more assertively and confidently during the interviews, and on average even asked for higher starting salaries! Again, lots of implications here for thoughtful marketers.

The power of embodied cognition means that your products and services actually have the potential to change how your customers feel. So, one obvious takeaway is to do whatever you can to get them to try and use what you sell.

In the old days of marketing, it was common for companies to loan their customers samples to take home and experience. Even Apple did this when the company first introduced the Macintosh; it needed to take radical steps to wean consumers from the IBM mindset. That might not be financially feasible today, but really anything you can do to immerse your customer with your product is helpful. Encouraging buyers to take a “test drive” breaks down barriers to acceptance as their self-concepts meld with the items.

I saw this transformation play out literally hundreds or even thousands of times when I worked as a formalwear salesman starting in junior high and through college. If I had a nickel for every time a woman dragged her reluctant fiancé into the store… and then after much cajoling he emerged from the dressing room dressed in a tuxedo and a smile as he was able to visualize the role much more clearly. You would have sworn that some magic machine replaced this guy with James Bond! Today of course we have immersive technology like augmented reality and virtual reality that can accomplish the same thing.

We buy what we are, and we are what we buy.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Michael Solomon, author of The New Chameleons: Connecting with Consumers Who Defy Categorization 

The Blake Project Helps Brands In All Stages Of Development: Get actionable guidance from experts on Brand, Growth and Purpose strategy.

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Surprisingly, much of marketing theory and practice doesn’t fully acknowledge these connections. Sure, modern advertising tactics routinely paint an aspirational picture of what you could be like if you just bought Brand X. Still, there often feels like a disconnect between the positive images that creative directors create and the way that their bottom-line focused clients think about the real reasons we buy and consume.

For many of us (even for a lot of experienced marketers), there is a dichotomy between Me versus The Things I Buy. This is the case for several reasons including:

1. We tend to focus on a product’s functional attributes (e.g., gas mileage) rather than its’ subjective benefits (e.g., impressing your friends with your new sports car)
2. A simplistic (modernist) view of cause-and-effect tends to obscure the long-term psychological dimensions of brand ownership (e.g., asking a research subject about the likelihood of buying a new fragrance on a numerical scale is much different than probing about how that product acts as an “ally” in social interactions)
3. Most assessments of brand meaning are highly mechanistic. They try to measure brand equity via simple scales — 1 don’t agree to 7 highly agree — that ask consumers to quantify their level of satisfaction with a brand’s performance. They don’t tap into the important nuances about the many ways a product or service links to a consumer’s identity.
4. Until fairly recently, product choices weren’t as integral to self-identity as they are today. That’s because the traditional markers and guideposts people used for millennia were still robust. These include place of birth (and likely death), religion, and social standing and family lineage.
5. Before the dawn of the postmodern era, many brand choices were preordained and offered relatively few options. For example, in the age of large, homogeneous market segments the brands that defined a social category also were fairly homogeneous. Thus an “organization man” of the 1950s or early 1960s didn’t have too much latitude in his clothing choices (the standard white shirt or perhaps a daring light blue), and the housewife of the same era relied on familiar “household brands” with huge market share to fill her pantry. Many choices were proscribed by societies that tolerated little deviation from a set pattern. Some cultures developed explicit rules (known as sumptuary laws) about the specific garments and even colors that certain social classes and occupations were allowed to display. These traditions live on today in Japanese style manuals that set out detailed instructions for dressing and how to address people of differing status.
6. The very concept of a unique “self” that you express via your choices was somewhat alien in many cultures. Many Eastern cultures stress the importance of a collective self, where a person derives his or her identity in large measure from a social group. They tend to focus on an interdependent self, where we define our identities largely by our relationships with others. For example, a Confucian perspective stresses the importance of “face”: others’ perceptions of the self and maintaining one’s desired status in their eyes.

Brand Meaning And Brand Resonance

A deeper view of brand meaning takes us to why our possessions really matter. In fact, there are a multitude of dimensions that lead to what my colleagues and I call brand resonance. We mean by this term the extent to which a brand’s meaning reverberates with the user in a fundamental way. A resonant brand connects with you, because it helps you to express some aspect of your identity.

Here are a few examples of brand resonance dimensions.

Interdependency: Does my brand facilitate habits, rituals, and routines that entwine the brand’s meanings seamlessly into the consumer’s everyday life? Brand example: Ben & Jerry’s ice cream

Intimacy: Does my brand have “insiders” who know details of its history, including significant product development particulars, myths about product creators, and obscure “brand trivia” or facts? Brand example: Air Jordan trainers

Category resonance: Is my brand iconic within its category; do customers use it as a benchmark to compare other brands? Brand example: Harley-Davidson motorcycles

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Michael Solomon, author of The New Chameleons: Connecting with Consumers Who Defy Categorization 

The Blake Project Helps Brands In All Stages Of Development: Get actionable guidance from experts on Brand, Growth and Purpose strategy.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

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Compare a discreet luxury brand like this to, say, the very prominent repeating logo pattern you might find on a Louis Vuitton bag or perhaps a pair of sunglasses emblazoned with a very large Dolce and Gabbana label that runs across the front. This contrast demonstrates that luxury brands vary in the type of status signaling they employ. As a rule, those who are wealthier and don’t have a high need for status rely on “quiet signals” and likely will be put off by excessive displays. Luxury brand marketers need to understand these distinctions, because their customers may or may not value products with explicit logos and other highly visible cues that signal conspicuous consumption.

How Accurate Is The Affluent Customer Label?

How do we know whether customers value loud signals or eschew them? At the least it’s useful to focus on another familiar dichotomy: Old money vs. new money. People who have had money for a long time tend to use their fortunes a lot differently. Old money families (e.g., the Rockefellers, DuPonts, Fords, etc.) live primarily on inherited funds. One commentator called this group “the class in hiding.”

Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, moneyed American families became more discreet about exhibiting their wealth. Many fled from mansions such as those we still find in Manhattan (the renovated Vanderbilt mansion now is Ralph Lauren’s flagship store) to hideaways in Virginia, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

Mere wealth is not sufficient to achieve social prominence in these circles. You also need to demonstrate a family history of public service and philanthropy, and tangible markers of these contributions often enable donors to achieve a kind of immortality (e.g., Rockefeller University, Carnegie Hall, or the Whitney Museum). “Old money” consumers distinguish among themselves in terms of ancestry and lineage rather than wealth. Furthermore, they’re secure in their status. In a sense, they have trained their whole lives to be rich.

In contrast to people with old money, today there are many people—including high-profile billionaires such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sir Richard Branson—who are “the working wealthy.” The Horatio Alger myth, where a person goes from “rags to riches” through hard work and a bit of luck, is still a powerful force in our society. That’s why a commercial that showed the actual garage where the two cofounders of Hewlett-Packard first worked struck a chord in so many.

Although many people do in fact become “self-made millionaires,” they often encounter a problem (although not the worst problem one could think of!) after they have become wealthy and change their social status. The label nouveau riche describes consumers who recently achieved their wealth and who don’t have the benefit of years of training to learn how to spend it.

Pity the poor nouveau riches; many suffer from status anxiety. They monitor the cultural environment to ensure that they do the “right” thing, wear the “right” clothes, get seen at the “right” places, use the “right” caterer, and so on. In major Chinese cities such as Shanghai, some people wear pajamas in public as a way to flaunt their newfound wealth. As one consumer explained, “Only people in cities can afford clothes like this. In farming villages, they still have to wear old work clothes to bed.”

Obviously, income is the way many of us “keep score” in our consumer society. Even a person’s credit score sometimes doubles as an admission card when dating sites like Datemycreditscore.com use it to screen potential suitors. But even when we take a closer look at the basic Haves vs. Have Nots dichotomy, it’s not that difficult to identify counterexamples that illustrate just how permeable these categories can be:

• The abdication of Edward III to marry the commoner Wallis Simpson in 1936, and more recently the “stepping back” of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry as they transitioned from Royals to Commoners.
• The practice of parody display, whereby affluent consumers deliberately adopt symbols we associate with people who don’t have such deep pockets, such as ripped jeans and trucker hats.
• Historically, people associated tattoos with social outcasts. For example, authorities in 6th-century Japan tattooed the faces and arms of criminals to identify them, and these markings served the same purpose in 19th-century prisons and 20th-century concentration camps. Marginal groups, such as bikers or Japanese yakuza (gang members), often use these emblems to express group identity and solidarity. Today in contrast a tattoo is a fairly risk-free way to express an adventurous side of the self – even when that self belongs to a middle-class adolescent. Getting inked is commonplace around the world; at least according to one survey Italy leads the pack with 48% of respondents claiming to have at least one tattoo. Hardly marginal, right?

Organizations that target “the rich” may fall into the trap of assuming that all affluent consumers are the same. Despite our stereotype of rich people who just party all day long, one study found that the typical millionaire is a 57-year-old man who is self-employed, earns a median household income of $131,000, has been married to the same wife for most of his adult life, has children, has never spent more than $399 on a suit or more than $140 for a pair of shoes, and drives a Ford Explorer (the humble billionaire investor Warren Buffett comes to mind).

Indeed, many affluent people don’t consider themselves to be rich. One tendency researchers notice is that these people indulge in luxury goods while they pinch pennies on everyday items; they buy shoes at Neiman Marcus and deodorant at Walmart, for example.

These revelations at the least remind us that the simple dichotomy of Rich vs. Poor deserves more nuance and probably some psychographic work as well. In fact, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence divides consumers into three groups based on their attitudes toward luxury:

Luxury Is Functional—These consumers use their money to buy things that will last and have enduring value. They conduct extensive prepurchase research and make logical decisions rather than emotional or impulsive choices.

Luxury Is A Reward—These consumers tend to be younger than the first group but older than the third group. They use luxury goods to say, “I’ve made it.” The desire to be successful and to demonstrate their success to others motivates these consumers to purchase conspicuous luxury items, such as high-end automobiles and homes in exclusive communities.

Luxury Is Indulgence—This group is the smallest of the three and tends to include younger consumers and slightly more males than the other two groups. To these consumers, the purpose of owning luxury is to be extremely lavish and self-indulgent. This group is willing to pay a premium for goods that express their individuality and make others take notice. They have a more emotional approach to luxury spending and are more likely than the other two groups to make impulse purchases.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Michael Solomon, author of The New Chameleons: Connecting with Consumers Who Defy Categorization 

The Blake Project Helps Brands In All Stages Of Development: Get actionable guidance from experts on Brand, Growth and Purpose strategy.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

Sometimes this insubordination works against a product: An epilator for men failed because males couldn’t accept the idea of hair removal that didn’t involve the testosterone-laden act of shaving. The new solution was more efficient. It just didn’t fit conveniently into the customer’s expectations about male versus female products.

Carefully identify the categories your industry uses to define offerings. Then demolish them.

Under the right circumstances going against the grain actually creates wonderful opportunities. What if a marketer creates a new category, possibly by merging two existing ones? Chrysler fused a station wagon with a sedan to invent the minivan. This new category then spawned yet another, with the advent of the modern SUV in the 1990s.

Wearable technology fuses fashion accessories with computers, so a stylish woman can wear a piece of Swarovski jewelry that also happens to monitor her heart rate. The global market for wearable electronics is projected to reach US$61.4 billion by 2025, driven by the availability of inexpensive sensors, miniaturized yet powerful microchips and processors, low-power lighter electronic components, evolving app ecosystem and the resulting expansion of applications addressed by wearable products and services.

Today, we see a great example of this fusion strategy in the apparel business. Even before the pandemic, the industry was showing anemic growth with one exception: Athleisure. This stepchild of leisure clothing and athletic clothing (formerly two distinct categories) has created an entirely new market, and a cultural phenomenon as well. The term athleisure recently entered the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Analysts expect this market to be worth $257 billion globally by 2026.

Or, maybe you can fuse a fashion product with a functional one. We saw this during the pandemic when designers like Gucci and Fendi started to produce high-end facemasks for trendy social distancers.

When I worked as a consultant for a very large textile company I discovered that when some pioneers in the emerging “smart garment” domain look at a pair of panty hose, they see something other than silky legs: A “delivery system” that can literally apply vitamins, medications and caffeine (that reduces the appearance of cellulite) to the body. Just add some microencapsulation to the fibers to release the substance when the customer moves, and you’re playing in a whole new space.

Become The Rule Maker

Hybrid products and services that combine features of two or more existing verticals get to define the rules for a brand-new category – at least until someone else destroys the category. As we see in the case of the athleisure hybrid, today’s consumers no longer yearn for conventional categories. They’re climbing out of the boxes we put them in. Like leisurewear versus athletic wear, the basic assumptions we use to make sense of the market have collapsed.

What’s also “interesting” is that these dichotomies are embedded so deeply that brand owners don’t even think about them – until they disappear. Fundamental categories that form the bedrock of marketing strategy and customer insights no longer exist. Brand owners love to invoke the cliché “think outside the box,” but when it comes to customer insights, perhaps it’s not enough to do this. Don’t just think outside the box – destroy the box.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Michael Solomon, author of The New Chameleons: Connecting with Consumers Who Defy Categorization 

The Blake Project Helps Brands In All Stages Of Development: Get actionable guidance from experts on Brand, Growth and Purpose strategy.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers