How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding

CHAPTER 2

How Is Cultural Branding Different?

ICONIC BRANDS HAVE BEEN GUIDED by a set of tacit strategic principles that I call the cultural branding model. These principles differ entirely from those advanced by conventional branding schemes. In fact, cultural branding upends many verities by which managers have sworn for decades. To learn how cultural branding works requires setting aside conventional thinking and developing a new mind-set. To seed this mind-set, I begin with three short case studies in which I contrast cultural branding with the three branding models that dominate business practice today.

Since the 1970s, managers have overwhelmingly relied on a cognitive model of branding—what I call mind-share branding. In the 1990s, some ...