how to build an iconic brand - aalto

Market Leader Summer 2003 35

DOUGLAS HOLTB R A N D I N G

Brand nirvana is to build an icon – tocreate a brand like Coke, Harley or Nikethat generates huge market value overlong periods because it serves as a container for cultural ideals. But the pathmost companies follow in the pursuit ofthe iconic grail is a dead end. Marketersmisunderstand how icons work, because,for over three decades, they have beentaught to think in terms of what theauthor calls the ‘mind-share’ model.Mind-share principles are irrelevant in thebuilding of icons. Instead, as Snappleshows, marketers wanting to build iconsmust think in terms of ‘culture share’

THE ‘MIND-SHARE’ branding modeltook off in the US in the 1970s. In aseries of articles in Advertising Age –

later expanded into the best-selling bookPositioning: The Battle for Your Mind – Al Riesand Jack Trout put forward a simple argu-ment: for a brand to succeed in a society inwhich the volume of mass communicationfar exceeded what consumers could digest, itmust own a simple, focused position in theprospect’s mind.

This position should be based upon whatwas important in the product category, usu-ally a valued benefit or aspirational identity.This provocative image – of brands contest-ing for scarce mental real estate, staking outadjectives in the customer’s mind – has beenthe foundation for the most influential writ-ings on branding ever since.

By DOUGLAS HOLT

Douglas Holt is a professor at the Harvard Business School.

How to build an

iconicbrand


36 Market Leader Summer 2003

world of culture and society, for this is therealm in which iconic brands create value.

The myth economyConsumers place such high value on iconicbrands because they play a crucial role insociety. Iconic brands use their products andconsumption occasions as a platform to per-form a special kind of story – a myth. Thesemyths are performed primarily throughadvertising, though all facets of marketing –product design, retail environment, packag-ing, public relations, product placementsand service delivery – can contribute to themyth.

Myths are stories people rely on to organ-ise their understanding of themselves andthe world. They work to shore up fragileworld-views and identities. What was previ-ously the work of the great religions hasbeen taken over in large part by commercialsubstitutes – the products of mass culture ofwhich the brand is one important type.Myths are neither fact nor fiction. They areneither arguments that must be tested forveracity, nor fables from which we learnmoral lessons. Rather, myths present a wayof understanding the world so compellingthat believers feel it must be true.

Just as each religion has its iconicprophets, saints and martyrs, today’s com-mercial myths have their own icons – politi-cal leaders, athletes, actors, businesspeopleand, increasingly, brands.

Brand genealogyIn my forthcoming book, titled Culture Share(Harvard Business School Press), I outline anew theory that describes the social condi-tions that create demand for iconic brandsand the branding principles that lead to suc-cessful icon building. This theory was con-structed using detailed historical studies ofsome of the most successful iconic brands inpost-war American business history, includ-ing Marlboro, Coke, Pepsi, Volkswagen,Levi’s, Budweiser, Mountain Dew, Disney,Apple and Harley-Davidson. Similar princi-ples are at work with European brands –Levi’s rise to iconic stature in the 1980s is an

Management books on branding todayseem to push the subject into new (and oftennew-age) territory, flaunting terms likebrand essence, brand soul, DNA and brandidentity. But they too are rooted in thetaken-for-granted principles of mind share.While the new breed of brand guru empha-sises the softer, emotional, more personableside of the brand, the idea is the same.Marketers are told to act as stewards of thebrand’s timeless abstracted identity: learn thetranscendental truth of the brand, and thenstay true to the course, consistently commu-nicating these associations in everything thebrand does.

Stripped of the new-age rhetoric, theseideas are no different than the positioningstatements that have filled marketing text-books for decades. The essence of the brandis the strength of associations between theproduct and its benefits, personality and userimagery. Some variation of the ubiquitousonion model, in which ‘hard’ product attrib-utes at the core of the brand are attached tovalued category associations and feelings, istoday found in virtually every brand strategydocument used at the world’s largest con-sumer marketing companies and advertisingagencies.

The problem with the mind-share modelis that it’s a one-size-fits-all solution.Branding experts throw all brands togetherand call what their managers need to do‘brand management’.

However, the catch-all term ‘branding’hides considerable diversity in how customervalue is created, and therefore how brandsshould be managed for success. For low-involvement, functional brands such asColgate or Gillette, mind share works rea-sonably well. But for brands in ‘lifestyle’ or‘identity’ categories – such as food, clothing,beauty products, soft drinks, alcohol andautos – mind-share thinking is irrelevant atbest.

These brands compete for ‘culture share’.They vie with other popular culture prod-ucts – films, books, music, television, sports,video games – to create stories that peoplewill identify with and use in their everydaylives. To understand iconic brands, we mustleave the consumer’s mind and enter the



exemplary case. The theory relies on a new method for

studying brands. The mind-share modelinsists on abstracting the brands from thesocial contexts that give them value. It wish-es, against all evidence, that brands shouldhave identities that are timeless, that standapart from the march of history.

But understanding how brands engage andcontribute to a nation’s culture as it changesover time requires methods used in culturalhistory and cultural studies to explain whyimportant cultural products (such asWestern films, Elvis Presley, Martha Stewartor Princess Diana) resonate at a particularhistorical juncture and how their resonanceebbs and flows over time. This method,which I term ‘brand genealogy’, combinescareful textual analysis of a brand’s perform-ance with a close examination of a nation’scultural discourses and social tensions asthese unfold over time.

The research revealed that companies didnot have an explicit understanding of howtheir efforts worked to build iconic brands.Even the most successful brands have con-tinually swerved from the icon-buildingpath. The reason became clear in interviewswith managers at many of the clients and adagencies of these brands. The power of mindshare is overwhelming: managers continueto interpret their actions in mind-shareterms even while their branding activitiesroutinely defy these principles.

How Snapple became an iconicbrandFounded by Brooklyn entrepreneurs, theSnapple line of teas and juices blossomedfrom a small New York concern into a pow-erhouse national icon in the space of lessthan a decade. Through its new products,advertising, promotions, distribution andeven customer service, the foundersauthored a quixotic script about a radicallydifferent kind of company, run by amateurswho shared their customers’ cynicismtoward how large firms were managed.

Everything the company did was antithet-ic to marketing as practised by Coca-Cola,PepsiCo and other sophisticated marketing

heavyweights. For product, the founders rolled out odd

and seemingly ill-conceived blends, a few ofwhich became hits. They relied on theirmost zealous customers for product andpackaging ideas, rushing oddball requestsinto production without so much as a focusgroup. For example, customer RalphOrofino’s affinity for melons inspired‘Ralph’s Cantaloupe Cocktail’, a drink thatfeatured Ralph’s face on the label.Customers took to these strange drinks, eventhe bad-tasting ones, as they offered surpris-es compared with the lowest commondenominator of corporate marketing.

For advertising, the founders hired‘celebrities’ they liked and could afford. Theads were so poorly produced and odd theybecame cult classics. In one ad, for example,less-than-charismatic tennis player IvanLendl mispronounced the brand’s namethrough his thick accent as ‘Schnahpple’.Another spot featured Richie Sambora, thenot particularly noteworthy guitarist withrock band Bon Jovi, because one of the own-ers was a fan.

Especially critical to Snapple’s rise was thehiring of ‘shock-jock’ talk-radio personalitiesRush Limbaugh and Howard Stern asspokesmen. Both personalities conveyed realaffection for Snapple and gave the drinkextra airtime in addition to the paid-forsponsorship.

It would be hard to pick two more differ-ent advocates. Limbaugh was the self-right-eous voice of the reactionary right, leading aloyal following of ‘angry white men’ whoattacked the liberal tendencies ofWashington politicians and the use of polit-ical correctness. Stern, on the other hand,

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B R A N D I N GDOUGLAS HOLT


The team found a promising approach in awoman named Wendy who did clerical workfor Snapple and had taken it upon herself torespond to mail as best she could. The brandteam cast ‘Wendy, the Snapple Lady’ as theletter-reader in dozens of TV ads. The adsopened with Wendy seated behind the real-life Snapple receptionist’s desk, throwing outan unselfconsciously friendly ‘Hi fromSnapple!’ It was clear to viewers that thechatty and plump Wendy was the real thing,not a Hollywood actor. She would then reada letter from a customer with a fussy ques-tion about one of Snapple’s products, a ques-tion that could only be of concern to a devo-tee.

After Wendy answered the question, thead would cut to a camera crew shooting inthe style of a documentary in the customers’homes to capture their reactions. None ofthe spots was scripted and various mistakeswere often left unedited on the film. Thetagline ‘100% Natural’ captured the ideathat Snapple was not only a natural product,but, even more important, it was a transpar-ent company run by well-meaning amateurs.The company was run by eccentric peoplewho shared their customers’ enthusiasm forfrivolous pleasures, not by MBAs and theirspreadsheets and market research.

To complement the advertising, Snapplesponsored several events, but not the usualblockbuster sports and celebrity spectacles ofCoke and Pepsi. Instead, Snapple stagedevents that mocked big corporate promo-tions: cherry spitting in Minnesota, yo-yotossing in New York and the MissCrustacean contest in New Jersey wereamong the sanctioned contests.

What the founders had stumbled upon,and what the new brand team nimbly ampli-

thrived on a nihilist attitude that involvedcelebrating whatever polite society consid-ered tasteless and insulting whatever it con-sidered important. Stern loved to call thebluff of America’s puritanical tendencies bystuffing as much sexual innuendo into hisprogramme as possible.

While diametrically at odds in terms ofpolitics and tastes, the two radio personali-ties were united in that they were America’smost provocative populist voices denouncingthe priorities and tastes of American elites.

Snapple gained ultimate credibility as anamateurish company becauseits two entrepreneurs knewnothing about professionalmarketing and had no interestin learning. They ran thecompany according to whatmade sense and seemed likefun. Snapple’s customersknew as much and lovedthem for it.

When a Boston privatebank bought a majorityinterest from the entrepre-neurs in the hope of expand-ing the Snapple magic toAmericans across the coun-try, it faced a huge risk.How could it apply professional marketingto a brand that attracted legions of devotedfollowers for its amateurism? The newowner avoided brand management ortho-doxy by hiring a young copywriter to run themarketing department. He, in turn, hired anupstart New York ad agency, Kirshenbaum& Bond, to create a national branding plat-form for Snapple.

This unorthodox brand team did notattempt to reduce Snapple to a set of brandessence adjectives, seek out deep consumertruths of the brand or plumb Snapple devo-tee’s emotional connections. Rather, itlooked carefully for ways to extend Snapple’sodd, amateurish performances further. Atthe time, Snapple’s New York followers wereso touched by the brand that they floodedSnapple’s small office with fan mail. Over2000 letters a week poured in, not to men-tion original videos, songs, artwork andpoetry, all dedicated to Snapple.

Snapple has expandedfrom iced teas andfruit drinks (above) toproduct extensionssuch as Elements (left)

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fied, was a new national myth that respond-ed to burgeoning discontent in Americansociety. To understand why Snapple con-nected so profoundly with a large slice of theAmerican public, we must place Snapple’samateurish brand performance in the con-text of the social tensions in early-1990sAmerican society.

During the 1980s, most Americans, partic-ularly men, had signed up to RonaldReagan’s call-to-arms to get tough again, likethe frontiersmen of the West, to revive thecountry’s economic and political stature.With gung-ho entrepreneurs, tougher busi-ness practices and painful but necessary

reorganisations, Reagan promised thatAmerica would lead the world again.

By the early 1990s, the US had largelybeen transformed into a more dynamic butalso more cut-throat economy, with the con-stant threat of downsizing and re-engineer-ing disrupting the labour markets. Profitssurged, and the country found a new set ofheroes in its swashbuckling entrepreneurs(Ted Turner, Bill Gates) and athletes(Michael Jordan) who exhibited the ‘Just doit’ spirit.

But while companies and elites profitedhandsomely, the constant restructuring leftmany American workers in service-economy‘McJobs’. This growing imbalance becamewidely understood around 1991. These sameAmericans expressed particular disgust intheir elected officials, who seemed to bepawns of corporate America rather than pro-tectors of their interests.

Snapple jumped into this powerful currentof discontent and devised a blissful rebuttal.Through its marketing activities, Snappleauthored a myth suggesting that big corpo-rations and the overpaid elites who ran themwere not needed at all. In the utopia Snappleacted out, companies were run by amateurswho cared more about having fun with theircustomers than in generating profits tostockholders. They inspired their customersand they played around with products andpromotions, however crazy. Drinking a bot-tle allowed customers to experience this fan-tasy as a salve for the excruciating identityproblems they faced.

As Snapple’s myth engaged this emergingsocial discontent, sales rose rapidly fromunder $50 million in 1987 to over $200 mil-lion in 1992. Hardcore devotees wereinspired by Snapple’s voice in the wilderness.Then, as mass culture took up the populistrevolt, Snapple sales soared, approaching$700 million in 1994.

Quaker Oats purchased Snapple at thisjuncture, believing the company could great-ly improve on Snapple’s successes with itsprofessional marketing operations. Thecompany’s actions reveal that its managerscompletely misunderstood what had gener-ated Snapple’s culture share – its myth ofanti-corporate amateurism. The new ownerfired Limbaugh and Stern, scrapped Wendyand the ‘100% Natural’ campaign for a moreprofessional and conventional treatment,and instituted a rationalised new productdevelopment process.

The company thought it could optimiseSnapple’s value by applying its expertise inmind-share branding. Instead, Quaker killedSnapple’s myth and, soon enough, Snapplewas no longer treated as an icon in Americansociety. Because Quaker marketers did notunderstand the principles of icon-building,

1972: Leonard Marsh, Hyman Golden and Arnold Greenbergset up the Unadulterated Food Corporation and beginselling fruit drinks to health-food stores in New York.The name Snapple comes from a carbonated apple sodathat was part of the original line-up.

1989: Snapple sales total $24 million.

1992: Boston-based investment group Thomas H. Lee & Co.buy Snapple. Three months after taking the companypublic, Snapple’s value has tripled.

1993: Snapple sales climb to $516 million. Quaker Oats buysSnapple for $1.7 billion.

1997: Quaker Oats sells Snapple for $300 million to TriarcBeverage Group. The new owner introduces productextensions such as Elements and WhipperSnapples.

2000: Cadbury Schweppes buys Snapple for an estimated $1 billion.

2003: Snapple has over 30 different flavours and is sold in 80countries around the world.

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ates the powerful desires and anxieties thatmass-cultural myths address.

The populist backlash of the early 1990swas given political expression in the massivedefection from Republican and Democraticparties to the populist candidacies of RossPerot, Pat Buchanan, Jessie Jackson andJerry Brown. It was given cultural expressionin the form of what could be called a ‘mythmarket’ – a new genre of myths that sprungup to feed off the contradiction.

In what can be termed the ‘slacker mythmarket’, Americans suddenly gained anappetite for highly cynical and nihilist coun-terpoints to Reagan’s version of Americanideals. Television programs such as TheSimpsons and Beavis and Butthead becamehits. The film Wayne’s World, grunge bandNirvana and the cartoon strip Dilbert paint-ed culture-leading myths that responded tothese tensions. Snapple’s great success beginswith the fact that, rather than compete onbenefits or trends or lifestyle, it targeted thisextraordinarily powerful myth market.

2. Act as a cultural activist Snapple not only targeted an expansive mythmarket, it actually was one of the instigatorsof these myths. It ran its satirical ads andintroduced playful flavours long before themyth market took off. Icons act as culturalleaders, as activists encouraging people tothink and act differently through their sto-ries. The most powerful iconic brands areprescient, anticipating changes in society.

Snapple earned tremendous loyalty fromconsumers because it crystallised a tensionthat had not yet been articulated, then pro-vided a compelling symbolic resolution tothis tension. Icons are charismatic leaders

the group lost some $1.4 billion when it hadto sell off the Snapple brand in a fire sale assales came crashing down.

Snapple’s subsequent brand owners, firstTriarc and now Cadbury-Schweppes, havedone their best to recapture the magic ofSnapple’s halcyon days by echoing its origi-nal communications. Snapple’s myth of thecompany of amateurs, which took aim at theparticular populist sentiments that eruptedin the USA of the early 1990s, has now beendistilled as ‘quirky and alternative’.

American culture and society have movedon, but Snapple performs a watered-downversion of a story whose resonance peaked adecade ago. As a result, Snapple has becomea conventional lifestyle brand. A strategythat has pulled Snapple out of history con-tinues to dilute its stature as an icon.

How to build an iconSnapple’s extraordinary success is inexplica-ble when viewed through the lens of themind-share model. Snapple did not take onCoke and Pepsi by capturing category bene-fits like refreshment or youthfulness. Nordid the brand grab hold of desired lifestyleimagery. Snapple did not plumb a deepproduct truth or a profound consumer emo-tion.

What Snapple did was to ignore categorycompetition and, instead, enter foreign terri-tory for conventional brands – the realm ofcultural politics. Snapple represented a pop-ulist challenge to the new-economy labourmarket and the elites in government andbusiness that were installing it. WhileSnapple’s myth was highly innovative, theprinciples underlying it are identical to thosepreviously established by brands such asMarlboro, Volkswagen and Nike. Theseprinciples are radically different to those thatunderpin the success of mind-share brandssuch as Pampers, Gillette or Colgate.

1. Target a cultural contradictionIcons do not target demographic groups orpsychographic clusters. Rather, they takeaim at the most important cultural tensionsin society. Icons target emerging contradic-tions because it is the contradiction that cre-

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that advance a change in the culture. Theydo not simply evoke benefits, personalitiesor emotions; they advance causes. Icons areresolutely political in their stance, using sto-ries to evoke new ideas, new ways of living.

3. Create original expressive culture as anartist Iconic brands have charisma: people aredrawn to them and pay attention to theirpoint of view because they act as artists.They invent new culture. Iconic brands donot follow trends or attach themselves to hotcelebrities. Mimicking existing culture con-veys that the brand is a follower rather thanan inspirational leader. Instead, iconicbrands use cultural developments as a palettewith which to create. All of Snapple’s brand-ing activities – from new product develop-ment to advertising to promotion – werestartling in their originality, but all expresseda unified political voice. Iconic brands avoidattributions of cultural parasitism becausethey always add value to the culture theyencounter.

4. Develop an authentic populist voiceFor a brand to become an icon, it must beperceived as a credible spokesperson for themyth. People must trust that the brand has adeep understanding of the point of view it isarticulating and that it is committed to itsviews rather than playing a game of imper-sonation for commercial gain. Americaniconic brands earn this authenticity byspeaking with credibility from within one ofAmerica’s populist epicentres. Populist epi-centres are non-commercial places (subcul-tures, folk cultures, social movements) wherenew culture is created untainted by commer-cial interests.

Snapple’s authority was cemented by thefact that Rush Limbaugh and Howard Sternnot only endorsed the brand, but reallyseemed to love it. That Snapple was afavourite of muckrakers at opposing ends ofthe political spectrum was definitive proofthat Snapple inhabited the same space as itspolitically disaffected customers. Twenty-first century customers are deeply distrustfulof opportunistic brands that swipe publicculture for private purposes. Snapple and

other iconic brands avoid these attributionsby becoming committed insiders in the pop-ulist worlds from which they speak.

ConclusionIcons cannot be built with mind-share prin-ciples. Mind-share strategies are exercises inintensive abstraction. After months andmonths of haggling between brand man-agers, ad planners and market researchers,the strategy is boiled down to a handful ofcatchphrases and adjectives, augmented per-haps with some pictures or a video. But whatthis internal distillation accomplishes is tosqueeze out of the brand the cultural speci-ficity that is essential for icon status.

As they struggle to burrow deep into con-sumers’ minds, marketers have ignored thefact that the value of culture-share brands iscreated and transformed in society itself. Toensure that strategy fits with history, strate-gy must move beyond abstract benefitdescriptions to an understanding of how thebrand fits into what is taking place in cultureand society. ❦

Two more brand icons:Budweiser’s famouslizards and frogs ads(above) and DavidBeckham in Pepsi’s latest campaign (right)

how to build an iconic brand - aalto

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