CULTURAL BRANDING AND STATUS SYMBOL DEVELOPMENT
Status Symbol definition, as well as luxury goods appeal has changed; the phenomenon have relevant consequences on branding management.
In respect with it, the cultural strategy has never been so actual and important as it is witnessed by brands like Apple.
Among conventional branding models (for instance mind-share branding, emotional branding or viral branding), we find Cultural Branding.
Cultural strategy founder, Douglas B. Holt, claims that branding isn’t a mere advertising function[1], yet it is a relevant strategical perspective to achieve the most important marketplace goals.
Specifically, the founder of this model demonstrates that icons brands reached a status by having ideological influence. This means that branding isn’t separated from relevant societal events and should be taken into account to figure out what moves to make in order to gain a relevant space in consumers’ minds and lives.
It’s interesting to notice brands aren’t the real initiators of ideological change, the complainant producers are for example all cultural industries; in other words to apply cultural strategy to a brand is essential to look at those ones and drive their wave.
In fact, brands use their market power to attract faithful followers; then, through the repetition of this mechanism brands transform the “emerging culture” in “dominant forms”, which is the case of Apple or Harley Davidson.
With regard to it, cultural brand basically is depicted as a perceptual frame; in other words, customers’ experiences and assessments are made in it and its value is built on four different components. These four are: reputation value, determined by the quality perception; relationship value, linked to customer-product long-term interrelationship; experiential value, which works as time-saver for decision-making by highlighting a specific benefit of the product; and symbolic value, it operates as an identity construct, which is a phenomenon we have found since the ancient Rome Era and the toga status symbol)[2].
It’s also worth noting the potential power of symbolic value if streamlined in the brand culture (it’s the case of Apple, well-recognized for its engineering), that’s why my attention focused on the status symbol definition and its consequences on branding management.
Among the academics, the most engaged on the subject is Thorstein Veblen, who states that “In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power”, and goes on claiming “the conspicuous abstention from labour … becomes the conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement[3]”.
Moreover, the carefree idleness status symbol influences the propensity to purchase luxury goods with a strong brand identity; that is why brands like Rolex or Ferrari are recognized as status symbol brands (For more details see footnote number 4)[4].
According to this subject, Silvia Bellezza[5], Neeru Paharia and Anat Keinan, authors of a recent paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, seem to be skeptical about the current validity of the abovementioned assumption. Those researchers claim that “In a curious reversal, the aspirational objects here are not some luxury goods — a nice watch or car, which are now mass-produced and more widely available than they used to be — but workers themselves, who by bragging about how busy they are can signal just how much the labour market values them and their skills”. Furthermore, the said assumption seems to be confirmed by the fourth edition of Albatross Global Solutions and Numberly’s ‘The Journey of a Luxury Consumer’ report, which declared that fewer UK consumers seem to look at luxury products as a status sign.
Under these circumstances, the question is: How to work strategies to reach “the busy man”? Once an individual’s status symbols are detached from physical objects what’s next for luxury objects?
Moreover, it should be highlighted the “busy man status symbol” is proper for countries as U.S., while countries as Italy, Spain or Greece, are still well-described by Veblen conception of status symbol. So, the quest, in this case, is: How to design an efficient strategy when countries seem to be addressing to different kind of status symbols and as a consequence to be stimulating towards different aspirational objects?
The first step is linked to the people who buy luxury goods today and what are they looking for buying them. Those ones have unique characteristics as result of “The digital revolution” they experimented and the environment where they grew up. As reported by Antonio Achille, Boston Consulting Group’s associate and chief of its luxury team, the current generation is much more into product experience, its quality and sharing and not into Veblen goods.
“Experiencing and being individuals” became more important than owning something, which explains the subjectivity of any purchase according to Shauna MacDonald, Principal, and Founder at Brookline Public Relations, Inc., a Canadian-based leading PR agency. Nowadays, luxury means pampering yourself, maybe with privileged holidays, top-quality dining experience, private jets and VR practice[6]. This, explains why “experimental luxury” increasing by 7,5% a year up until 2020, and “personal luxury” (the conventional ones as watches or cars) will increase by 4%. As said before, a shift from the conventional definition of luxury goods to another one is made if we consider the decrease of “owning” and the increase of “sharing” while experiencing products.
Albatross CX, a world leader in assessing luxury customers’ experience, suggests the reason of this circumstance is the increase of Chinese luxury consumers which have no interest in exclusivity, defined as being separated from peers.
In this view, experience walks with quality, which is tightly linked to the story behind the product, and as well as the brand culture and its capability of innovation.
A brand that seems to be riding the wave is Apple, which embodies perfectly the brand culture of “busy man” and Millenials’ needs.
According to the Marketing Week commentator Mark Ritson, Apple seeks to convert itself into a luxury good seller, supported by the partnership with the fashion giant Hermès on a limited- edition Apple Watch. It may worth mentioning Burberry, a British fashion brand that has launched for first in 2015 a streaming brand channel on the Apple Music.
To conclude, in the current blurring environment in which the individual aspirations for luxury goods are sometimes completely different from the classical ones (a nice watch like Rolex or a nice car like Maserati), the only survivors in branding are the ones not afraid by status quo changing, the ones that understand the relevance of culture in branding and don’t stop seeking for new stories and experiences to tell.
[1] Douglas, B. Holt. Brands and Branding. Cultural Strategy group
[2] Jan, Chipcase. How Status Symbols Lose Meaning In The Wrong Context
[3] Thorstein, Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
[4] T. Veblen, a sociologist, and an economist, is known for his “Theory of Leisure Class” and the definition of “conspicuous consumption”. He claims individuals make purchase decisions as a signal of their economic status. From the said assumption born the term “Veblen good”, a good more valued when its price increases. Individual perception of the product is strictly linked to “Exclusivity” and the status symbol derived from this feature; (source: Investopedia, Definition of Thorstein Veblen).
[5] Silvia Bellezza, a professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, Georgetown’s Neeru Paharia and Harvard’s Anat Keinan, authors of a recent paper in the Journal of Consumer Research about the prominence of an unusual status symbol: seeming busy (2016)
[6] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/artsales/11551843/What-are-the-new-status-symbols-for-the-ultra-rich.html
Bibliography:
Douglas, B. Holt. Brands and Branding. Cultural Strategy group
http://interbrand.com/best-brands/best-global-brands/2017/sector-overviews/luxury/
http://www.avenuecalgary.com/Shopping-Style/A-Brief-History-of-the-Status-Symbol/
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/thorstein-veblen.asp
Jan, Chipcase. How Status Symbols Lose Meaning In The Wrong Context
Silvia Bellezza, Neeru Paharia and Harvard’s Anat Keinan. Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol, Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research
Thorstein, Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
