Does heritage matter in marketing?
November 27th, 2009 by Jon Clements
At the risk of turning this into booze week on PR Media Blog, it’s hard to find a better example of “heritage marketing” than Jack Daniels.
Its sepia-photo-laden advertising, depicting a tradition of distilling going back more than a century imbues the brand with an authenticity and sense of quality that has stood the test of time. And, importantly for the brand maintaining its backstory, its founder was a real person called Jack Daniel. So far, so good, if you conveniently set aside its reputation as rock stars’ ruin for a moment.
But how crucial for a brand is having a genuine history? Or, conversely, how damaging is a hokey heritage?
A recent BBC story , investigated by its consumer affairs programme, “You and Yours”, revealed that the US fashion brand, Hollister - currently expanding its UK presence and which claims a history stretching back to 1922 - was in fact founded only in the Noughties.
If not suspicious enough, add to that a character called John Hollister - “adventurous traveller” and supposed company founder - branded “fictitious” by the BBC and a curt comment from the company itself when approached to explain its claims: “Due to our policies regarding press, we choose not to provide any comment on your questions.”
Despite the stubborn secrecy of the company and the aura of exposé in the BBC’s story, its vox pop of “teenage shoppers” found they really didn’t give a damn about Hollister’s historical fabrication.
Friend of PR Media Blog and marketing consultant at Goldsbrough Consulting, Matthew Goldsbrough, is phlegmatic about the issue: “When establishing a brand, it’s more about what it does and what it delivers rather than whether you can take it back through a lineage. Do you really care if there was, or wasn’t a “Mr.Volvo”?
He adds: “Any brand that underestimates the buyer is a fool. But I don’t think that a fake history matters greatly as the brand is not making a promise which it then breaks. At the younger end of the customer spectrum, people are much less reliant on complete provenance with a brand. Overall, the real test is ‘does it deliver?’”
Orson Welles once put together a film about the nature of authenticity called “F for Fake”. But for the modern shopper, is it more “C for couldn’t care less”?
Tags: BBC You and Yours, Goldsbrough Consulting, heritage branding, Hollister, Jack Daniels, Marketing, Matthew Goldsbrough
November 27th, 2009 at 10:47 am
History is replete with fake brand history (and even more with pseudo brand heritage and/values). Crabtree & Evelyn trade(d) on a mythical heritage that simeply didn’t exist. Tommy Hilfiger as a corporation has only traded since the mid 80s (despite pushing its “Made in USA” heritage thing - only to be nobbled for having the goods produced in the USA). Häagen-Dazs is a corporate fiction from the 60s and only retailing from the 70s.
Of course, the people who best did fake brand history were a certain Herr Hitler and his friends who managed to repackage Teutonic Romanticism and make it look like the history of a nation. Think about that next time you listen to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.
November 27th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
David
I think the book “Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?” included a reference to Crabtree and Evelyn which went something like “don’t get me started on those b********.”
And thank you for the erudite allusions. We’d expect nothing less on PR Media Blog!
November 27th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
The historical relationship of product-identity is paramount in establishing brand loyality. No longer can we spin a truth that can be unravelled by a click of a mouse. Consumers are more savvy, which means as a PR conscious relationship builder, “I” must maintain a stronger relationship to such truths. “Heritage” or historic-relationship does play a viable part on how a product or service is presented (even in the case of Jack Daniels). I will use myself as an example: As an American of Caribbean-North American slave heritage, to use visualization that entrenches my psyche back to that time would be extremely problematic. Therefore a conscious community effort within corporate must be considered and sustained. The real question for me is, “who is writing the truth on heritage,? Is it their truth or my truth? And when does one respect the community that is being written about?” HMMMMM
November 28th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Loretta
Thanks for leaving your comment.
While I accept the insights of Matthew and David elsewhere in this post, my feeling is that if an organisation seeks to base some of its marketing on an artificial history it makes me wonder what else it’s hiding. It resembles a form of spin - an undesirable technique at any time - that massages the truth about the company.
Your point about relating Caribbean-American experience back to slavery is interesting, as I can’t imagine the brand that would be so stupid as to use that as a communications approach. However, I would be interested to hear your views on marketing campaigns that target black people specifically. Earlier in the year AdAge looked at Coca Cola’s approach in this area:
http://adage.com/bigtent/post?article_id=137716