----personalising the brand...

Here are some questions i am grappling with-

Why are some brands ‘cult’/ ‘cool’/ ‘sexy’ and other not so? What can I expect of my brand? Are there limits to what it can achieve? How do I measure this limit?

What makes an ipod or Nokia so cool and talked about. And a Michelin, that for a 120 years, has been chugging along never thought of as a great brand?

Is it the quality of brand management?
Or is it the category?

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Perhaps it is just that miniaturisation and technology has opened up categories like the telephone and music player into things that are carried around and that are useful today in expressing one’s own personality- like a hairdo…or nail coloring or a can of Coke or a pack of cigarettes was in the past. To be a ‘killer brand’, the brand must participate in the consumer making a personal expression.

Within this constraint, the marketing elements can be mixed for enhancing the impact:
- The Ipod has a fixed form- it then uses other marketing elements to create an image that is aspirational and invites participation.
- Nokia- the form changes frequently- the brand uses form innovation to create participation.
- Question- What should Google be doing?

Does this mean then , that for a brand to be cool today, it must necessarily extend itself to this ‘personal extension’ category to develop its ‘coolness’. Then use the Halo effect to the other categories of the brand? Eg – Michelin uses its lifestyle products to become ‘cult’, and have this effect rub off on its primary business of tyres. Or HP using the line “making the PC more personal” establishing more intimacy with the consumer?

In the 60s, consumer brands high on quality became well known.

Then, with time, quality was no longer a differentiator- so quality along with Innovation was key to build a brand.

Today, quality and innovation are both not enough. The brand must make a personal expression of the user. Otherwise, strong as it may be, it can never become cult.

Does this explain why cola brand got so well established years ago. Because in a bottle, they could always be carried around. People expressed their choices and their personalities with Coke? Or Marlboro. Something they could not do with a Sony TV, but got around to with a walkman.

Question: Is the portable Play Station therefore a great platform to develop the PS brand as cult among gamers?


With the advent of miniaturisation, we carry a lot of accessories/ electronics/ that we could not have. Personal expression finds its way into a lot of things now.

Implication :

Michelin can be the benchmark among tyre brands/ car brands and other purchases with a similar purchase window/ industry promise (quality and innovation every few years).

But it cannot be as chic as an LVMH or iPod.

The other problem likely is that as more cateories are personalised, consumer spending will be diverted there. Consumers will likely be more brand aware in these categories, diverting money away from say a Sony notebook and settling for a Dell - using the difference to fund ‘personalised categories’ such as newer models of phones/ music and video players/ gaming devices.


- to continue. 1/12/2006.