OUGD601 - Research - Lifestyle Brands

Lifestyle Brands by
S. Saviolo & A. Marazza

Saviolo, S. and Marazza, A. (2013). Lifestyle brands. Basingstoke [u.a.]: Palgrave Macmillan.

Social Identities

- Individuals do not make purchasing choices using a rational logic of economic convenience; men and women, as social beings, share values, symbols and a common language that ratify their belonging
- Consumption is a social phenomenon in which goods are the instruments that promote self-recognition and the ties with those who share the same values
- 'The Distinction' by Pierre Bourdieu sheds light on the fact that consumes buy and use products following distinctive and demonstrative logics
 > products are symbols of status, signalling and possibly helping to improve an individual's social status
- Anthropologist Ted Polhemus suggests brands, being signalling systems with a great communicative and symbolic power, allow an individual who adopts them to share a belief, to communicate a point of view in respect to society

Lifestyle & Lifestyle Brands

- 'Lifestyle' is a term often misused
- It's an analytical construct and originates from the famous text by Thornstein Veblen's 'The Theory of the Leisure Class' (1994)
- Diffused by Alred Adler, an Austrian physician
- According to Adler, each individual has his or her own unique and inimitable lifestyle with which he/she approaches the world and interprets with originality
- According to other scholars, the term 'lifestyle' refers to aspects of cultural trends as well as aspects of value that are strongly associated with consumption

How Lifestyle Brands Work

- Lifestyles, and therefore styles of consumption, reflect a person's attitudes, interests and opinions
- By adopting this meaning, the concept has been increasingly used as a basis for explaining postmodern consumption

- Lifestyle brands describe who we are. They communicate our status and our aspirations
- They indicate the way we deal with our life
- In truth, a 'lifestyle brand' status is achieved by the type of benefit and symbolic value that the customer associates with brand
- Consumers are increasingly adopting brands to express their identities = consumer self-expression
- A brand becomes a lifestyle brand when it promotes social benefits through a point of view on the world that a significant number of people adhere to by becoming customers, because they are represented in terms of attitudes, opinions and interests

Lifestyle Brands

- The world lifestyle suggests a way of life to which people associate patterns or relationships, behaviour and especially of consumption
- Lifestyle brands are able to generate a social benefit (when I buy this brand, the type of people I relate to are...)
- These are the brands that are the bearers of an ideology, which dictates the rules, or that indicates a way of life
- Patagonia promotes an environmentally friendly way of life. With Nike, one enters the community of those who want to push their limits

- A lifestyle brand almost always takes energy from the world of youngsters to assert and enforce the change

An Interpretative Model

- The core mechanism of Lifestyle Brands is based on a simple premise: in order to represent the attitudes, opinions and interests of a group of individuals the brand must first and foremost have a clear, original and coherent point of view
- This has to; be based on socially relevant values, expressed through an interesting and authentic storytelling; be explained through a distinctive and distinguishing manifesto that goes beyond the classical brand positioning and a simple value proposition; be expressed in a recognisable and consistent manner across all consumer/brand touch points
- What the brand believes in, how the brand states it, and the way it expresses it are the three cornerstones of a successful Lifestyle Brand
- Cornerstones are the Background > the Manifesto > the Expression
- Lifestyle brands have these cornerstones working in harmony

The Background

- The background of a Lifestyle Brand includes both its Credo and series of stories capable of involving its 'followers', fuelling the desirability and the brand mythology
- The Credo is represented by a few simple, fundamental attributes that describe the unique and original perspective the brands has of the world
- More specifically, it identifies the pillars on which the brand's ideal world should be based
- E.g. adidas Originals Credo consists of Originality, Authenticity and Creativity, while for Gucci it's about seduction, power and self-realisation
The other key component of the background are the stories that can be told about the company, its products, its customers/users, its founder etc
The stories can be seen as a practical and concrete reflection of the Credo
All successful Lifestyle brands are a treasure trove of anecdotes, starting from the biography of the founder up to his/ her memorable undertakings
- E.g. the life of Mademoiselle Coco remembered for the empowerment of women, from haircuts to the introduction of trousers to womenswear

The Manifesto

- If a Lifestyle Brand wants to represent an individual or a group of individuals, it needs to propose a distinctive and original perspective on the world and make immediately recognisable through some codes that represent it
- This is the manifesto or Lifestyle Proposition
- A set of intentions and topics
- Volcom, a sporting brand, has a manifesto declaring that the company was founded on liberation, innovation and experimentation while remaining dedicated to the breakdown of established traditions
- Their lifestyle proposition promotes the free and creative spirit of youth culture, addressing kids who share the same passion for art, music, movies skateboarding, , surfing, snowboarding and motorcross
- Lifestyle brands are not made to please everyone, but to be adored only by those who recognise themselves in the Proposition and intended to join
- Adidas Originals - 'we have become part of hip-hop, skateboarding, and high-fashion simply by being adopted by these communities'

- Typically, Lifestyle brands are instantly recognisable. 'If you say something is "very Ralph Lauren", you're immediately understood' said Audrey Hepburn in 1992
- L Brands acquire Lifestyle Codes that become permanent signs communicating a particular point of view on the world
- These signs may include logos, shapes, patterns, materials, colours etc
- E.g. Prada's 'dignified' nylon has established itself as an unmistakable symbol of innovative and sophisticated functionality on top of representing Prada's take on fashion
- Burberry's tartan design symbolises the Brit chic spirit or the brand
- Lifestyle codes influence the expression of the brand
- The culture of origin of Lifestyle Brands is the basis of their system of values
- E.g. in its first collection, Victoria's Secret purposefully evoked the English upper-class style whilst Uniqlo recalls Japanese Zen and manga cartoons

The Expression

- The three components of expression are communication activities, direct interaction with the consumer and through its products or services
- The expression has moved towards a holistic expression across all touch points and relationship with the customer
- A brand like Ralph Lauren has built stores that reproduce the environment of an American upper-class home, communicated with campaigns showing beautiful young and elegant people
- The critical success factors for Lifestyle Brands are consistency and authenticity, since the acceptance of a proposed way of life is based on a critical evaluation of real-life experiences, at all levels

Patagonia

- In 1993, after finding out that industrial cotton fibre had the highest environmental impact, Patagonia decided to convert all its production to organic cotton in less that 2 years
- In 2008, the company won the Eco Brand of the year
- The strong relationship with the community of users/customers rapidly transformed Patagonia into a cult brand
- All the sports that Patagonia promote are all 'silent' sports; lacking an audience, engines and environmental impact
- Customers are defined as Patagoniacs, they are evangelists of nature as well as of the brand itself

Background

- Credo can be summed up with the values of Simplicity, Freedom, Integrity and Love for Nature
- Patagonia is rich in stories that have built and continue to nourish the legend
- The logo is the skyline of Cerro Fitzroy looking West in Patagonia during the epic journey made by the founder

OUGD601 - Research - Brand Society

Brand Story by
Martin Kornberger

Kornberger, M. (2009). Brand society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Inventing Lifestyle

- Early studies suggest that the relationship between consumers and products was more important than either two
- This juncture where the individual relates to objects and uses this relationship to make sense of and give meaning to life is the birthplace of lifestyle
- It marks the moment when life could be given form and styled through consuming brands

- The Inner and Outer Joneses were intellectual parents of the lifestyle idea
 > Given their emphasis on the social and the psychological realties of consumption, individuals could shape their psychological environment through buying into a certain lifestyle

- Inner Joneses : inner satisfaction
 > uniqueness and personal happiness of the Inner Joneses would triumph over competition for status with the Joneses from next door - Dr Ernest Dichter in the Harvard Business Review

- 1959 - L. Rainwater et al. published 'Workingman's Wife: Her Personality, World and Lifestyle' (L. Rainwater, 1959)
 > the first study that used the concept of lifestyle to understand consumption
 > It interviews 420 working-class women from across America and an additional 120 middle-class women to cross-reference data

- Rainwater et al. were interested in the 'normal' Joneses - or better, their wives
 > they surveyed and interviews them, they let them tell their stories
 > they gathered data on their socioeconomic status, daily routines etc
 > "we need to know some of the basic facts about the working class housewife's personality and lifestyle..."
 > What they found was that the central characteristic of the working class wife was 'her underlying conviction that most significant action originates from the world external to herself rather than from within herself'

- This new lifestyle focus was soon critiqued as blunt manipulation
- Vance Packard's 'The Hidden Persuaders'
- According to Packard, the old technique of 'nose counting' that divided the population into large segments did not work anymore
- These large demographic segments did not reveal enough info about the individual
- Packard criticised the 'depth approach' to motivation research that used mass psychoanalysis and other methods to manipulate the masses
- The depth approach capitalised on the idea that people did not buy a functional commodity but an emotional, cultural and social brand with meaning
 . "people do not buy a car but prestige, and oranges but vitality"

- An experiment with smokers found that more than 98% of 300 brand-loyal smokers proved to be incapable of identifying their favourite brand

- For Packard, these manipulations were regressive "for man's long struggle to become a rational and self-guided being"
 > What Packard ultimately tried to protect was the 'privacy of our own minds'

Branding Life, Governing People

- Despite the critique of people such as Packard, the notion of lifestyle became one of the master concepts in marketing
- The building blocks for lifestyle would be individual brands, consumed en masse, would form a stylish assemblage
- Rather than persuading consumers that products fit into their lives, the concept of lifestyle turns this on its head and by the consumers waiting to fit into a lifestyle created/ advertised by the product
- Sidney Levy explains why the lifestyle concept expanded
- According to Levy, symbolising is natural to humans
- Most of the time we are not conscious of it, we constantly use symbols to express who we are
- Lifestyle is "a large complex in motion" and
- "to explore this large, complex symbol in motion that is a man's grand life style is to seek to define his self-concept, to describe the central set of beliefs about himself and what he aspires to, that provide consistency to what he does" - (Levy, 1964)
- Levy sees products as 'sub-symbols'
 > People then put together their lifestyles, and by extension their lives, through sub-symbolic products
 > Hence a 'consumers personality can be seen as the peculiar total of the products he consumes'
- Marketing would no longer try to sell products by creating an image around them

- Today, in the privileged parts of the world, we are driven by lifestyle more than anything else
- The questions we ask is whether one or the other lifestyle would be better, healthier

OUGD601 - Research - Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren
Redefining the Lifestyle (In Brand Story)

- In 1979, Lauren refreshed his image with a unique 20 page marketing campaign using photographs by fashion photographer Bruce Weber in national magazines
- "the ads feature little or no text, frequently using models, in which the clothes are seen as part of an overall lifestyle"
- "the results captured the public's imagination and have been frequently copied"
- With captions such as "rough wear - it was made to be worn," the ad campaign was the model for today's lifestyle branding advertising
- The 1981 Santa Fe collection generated an upscale image of Ralph Lauren as a lifestyle brand that presented a particular image of Americans to international markets

Lifestyle Merchandising

- Fashion, according to Teri Agins in her book 'The End of Fashion', is not about products, but rather about how they are marketed and sold as a 'brand image' or lifestyle merchandising
- What makes certain garments unique or special is the meaning given to them through branding campaigns
- This suggests that the actual garment has become secondary to the branding techniques used to sell it
- Klein's (CK) 1980 advertising campaign featuring a fifteen-year-old Brooke Shields
 > He had created mass hysteria over denim and generated an emotion response from consumers across the nation
- Mare Gobé in ' Emotional Branding' points out that successful fashion brands can capture the emotions and personal convictions of their customers

- "Corporations clearly need to fine tune their focus on the consumer psyche and understand the importance of the constantly evolving trends in their consumers' lifestyles" - Mare Gobé
- He believes that it will not be the norm for retailers to brand according to the needs of their specific target markets

- Grant McCracken - theory suggests that through social interactions, individuals assign status through fashion branded garments as well as to types of consumer goods

OUGD601 - Research - What Is Branding?

What is Branding by
Matthew Healey

Healey, M. (2010). What is branding?. Mies: Rotovision.

"Human civilisation is dependent upon signs and systems of signs, and the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs - if needed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning" - Charles Morris

- Originally, the word 'brand' derives from the Germanic word for burn, referring to the branding of cattle
 > we mean it figuratively when we talk about all the attributes of a product that make a lasting impression in a customer's mind

- A brand is a promise of satisfaction
- It is a sign, a metaphor operating as an unwritten contract between a manufacturer and a consumer, a seller and a buyer
- A consumer forms their own feelings about what a brand means - but they can be influenced by advertising and publicity of the manufacturer
- Branding is the process of continuous struggle between procedures and customers to define that promise and meaning

- Paraphrasing Karl Marx - People make their own decisions about who to be, how to live, and what to buy, but under circumstances shaped by brands' advertising, marketing and publicity

- Most buying behaviour is driven by storytelling and emotions, which are exploited by brands

Lifestyle

- One of the best ways to sell a brand is to position it as a vital part of a lifestyle that customers aspires to
- Build on attractive picture of how customers could live if they bought the products being sold

- "Every society can be broken down into segments"
 > the defining characteristics of these segments can be used to build this 'picture'

- Sometimes customers nowadays reassign products to lifestyle categories not intended by their marketers
 > e.g. vintage sport apparel being popular among street wear brands, consumers

- One of the things that make 'cult' brands so successful is that they seem to define a lifestyle all their own e.g. Apple defines the digital lifestyle
- Magazine brands were/are powerful definers of reader's lifestyles
- Esquire and playboy defined the lifestyle of the young man with aspirations and disposable income from the 1930s to the 1970s
- Power of mainstream magazines has decline with the growth of media

Brand Personality

- Every brand can be anthropomorphized
- At the heart of every brand is a set of characteristics, akin to a human personality, that customers can relate to
- We tend to see human atributes in things we want to have a relationship with