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Article2.pdf
Viewing Brands in Multiple Dimensions
W I N T E R 2 0 0 7 V O L . 4 8 N O . 2
R E P R I N T N U M B E R 4 8 2 1 0
Pierre Berthon, Morris B. Holbrook, James M. Hulbert and Leyland F. Pitt
P l e a s e n o t e t h a t g ra y a re a s re f l e c t a r t w o rk t h a t h a s b e e n i n t e n t i o n a l l y re m o v e d . T h e s u b s t a n t i v e c o n t e n t o f t h e a r t i c l e a p p e a rs a s o ri g i n a l l y p u b l i s h e d .
WINTER 2007 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 37
hen General Motors Corp. tried to revive its Daewoo
car division in the United Kingdom early in 2005 by
rebranding it with the Chevrolet badge, it ran into big
trouble. Car buyers had difficulty linking the iconic
American brand — immortalized in countless movies, celebrated in
numerous songs and enjoying more than 90% brand awareness —
with the low-priced Korean autos. The result was falling sales and
the resignation of the chief executive of GM’s operations in the
United Kingdom.1 Moreover, the Chevrolet brand itself deteriorated
significantly in the 2006 J.D. Powers & Associates annual satisfaction
survey in the United Kingdom, ending up ranked just ahead of
troubled automakers such as Fiat S.p.A. and far behind other Amer-
ican makes such as Ford Motor Co. or other Korean brands like
Hyundai Motor Co.
In another instance, marketers at Nestlé S.A.’s British operations
chose to capitalize on the brand equity of a much-loved confection, the
historic KitKat bar. In a bid to boost lackluster sales in 2003, the market-
ers launched brand extensions in multiple flavors such as Blood Orange, Lime
Crush and Christmas Pudding. Although there was temporary interest in the new
launches, the experiment failed spectacularly. KitKat’s overall U.K. sales fell by
18% in the two years prior to April 2006.2 Nestlé has since dropped almost all of
the unusual flavors.
These vignettes illustrate the actions of managers who fail to understand
all the dimensions of a brand. Specifically, few managers grasp the fact that
perceptions of a brand can and do change dramatically over time and from
one social or cultural setting to another. Indeed, companies cannot so much
manage a stable brand image as negotiate an evolving one — meaning that
their managers must redefine the brand discourse in more flexible language.
Viewing Brands in
Multiple Dimensions
Pierre Berthon is the Clifford F. Youse Professor of Marketing at Bentley College’s McCallum School of Business in Waltham, Massachusetts. Morris B. Holbrook is the William T. Dillard Professor of Marketing at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. James M. Hulbert is a visiting professor at the Henley Management College in Oxfordshire, England, and at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University and the R.C. Kopf Professor Emeritus at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Busi- ness. Leyland F. Pitt is a professor of marketing at Simon Fraser’s Segal Graduate School of Business in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Contact them at pberthon@ bentley.edu, [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].
The concept of
a “brand manifold”
helps managers
understand that
a brand’s impact
varies according to
who is valuing it,
in what context and
at what time.
Pierre Berthon,
Morris B. Holbrook,
James M. Hulbert and
Leyland F. Pitt
B R A N D I N G
W
B R A N D I N G
38 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2007
The Heart of the Problem At root, brands are symbols around which companies, suppliers,
supplementary organizations, the public and, indeed, customers
construct identities.3 It is a given that branding is a critical issue
for marketing and sales; strong brands facilitate the repeat pur-
chases on which sellers rely to enhance corporate financial
performance. Brands also ease the introduction of new products
and assist promotional efforts. And they enable premium pric-
ing as well as the market segmentation that makes it possible to
communicate coherent messages to specific target customer
groups. Marketers are rightfully obsessed with brand loyalty,
which is particularly important in categories such as food prod-
ucts or household cleaning products where repeat purchases
foster profitability.
Too often, though, brands have been seen solely as “instru-
ments” of management. This simplistic but prevalent view
assumes that marketing or brand managers own their brands and
that these brands are tools that, if managed properly, can help the
organization attain its objectives. Conversely, in some instances,
brands have become ends in themselves — or at least ends for the
people who manage them — overlooking the fact that their
critical role is as a means to an end.
Thus, what Theodore Levitt famously called marketing myopia
(a narrow definition of business focused on what the company
produces) has been augmented or replaced by branding myopia,
where the brand becomes an end in itself. As the Daewoo and
KitKat stories illustrate, such perspectives leave their proponents
exposed to the risks posed by changing aspects of consumption,
technology and competition.
Nevertheless, for all of their influence and contrary to popular
marketing rhetoric, the whole world is not in love with brands.
Today, a vigorous antibranding movement4 reflects powerful
antiglobalization activism and broader resistance to the offerings
of large corporations. The challenges posed to companies by such
changes in the business environment — an environment in
which brands are no longer solely the prerogative of marketing
— are likely to require refinement and extension of the ideas by
which brands are conceptualized and managed. The concept of
the “brand manifold,” which will be discussed later in this article,
takes a step in that direction.
Revisiting the Broader Implications of Brand During the 19th century and for much of the 20th, a company’s
value, notionally represented by the net book value of assets on
the balance sheet, was heavily dependent on tangible assets such
as plants and equipment. However, in recent years, the gap be-
tween market capitalization and net book value has increased to
enormous proportions, driven largely by the importance of intan-
gible assets. Key elements of these so-called “soft” assets are a
company’s brands — both for the company as a whole and for its
separate products — and the customer and other relationships
embedded therein. Indeed, research links both price premiums
and market share to brand equity.5 Observers of financial markets
are often intrigued to learn that the ratios of market capitalization
to revenues can range from as high as 20-to-one for companies
such as Microsoft, Nokia and Louis Vuitton, to as low as 0.6-to-
one for companies such as Ford, Volkswagen and Hertz.
Stakeholder assessments of a brand depend both on mediated
perceptions and on direct experience — that is, information about
a brand (brand communications) and direct interactions with a
brand (brand embodiments). Brand communications comprise
information from the company, customers and other stakeholders.
Brand embodiments constitute the brand as experienced through
products, employees, suppliers, channels, other third parties and
consumers — what some call customer touchpoints. If we distin-
guish between factors that are and are not directly under the
organization’s control — designated internal and external, respec-
tively — we see that stakeholder perceptions of the brand depend
on both internal and external communications and embodiments.
Managers must therefore understand and manage meanings of the
brand among both internal and external stakeholders.
In recent years, there has been vigorous debate on the role of
brands in the changing marketplace,6 giving vent to perspectives
that range from the radical7 to the refining.8 One aspect that has
been a hot topic for discussion concerns the extent to which
The three-worlds hypothesis of philosopher Karl Popper pro-
vides an excellent means of capturing all the dimensions of
the relationships among organizations, people, products
and brands.
The Relationship of Products, Brands and Culture
World 1
Collective knowledge, culture, images, language
Individual states of consciousness, individual perceptions, knowledge, emotions
Manifest objects, states and systems
World 2
World 3
WINTER 2007 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 39
branding efforts are aimed at current and future employees in an
attempt to deal with the consequences of permanent shortages of
knowledge workers. The topic has been particularly relevant to
industries such as energy and utilities, which are now threatened
with significant losses of skills and institutional memory as baby
boomers leave the work force.
Given such significant business factors and recognizing the es-
calation of competition worldwide, it is clear that the stewardship
of brands becomes a strategic issue that shapes the future of a
company as a whole rather than only being the work of marketing
decision makers. It becomes a strategic initiative and the collective,
collaborative work of the executive team. Indeed, branding may
already have become too important to be left to marketers for the
simple reason that brands are no longer just a marketing issue.
Relationships Among Organizations, Products, People and Brands To understand the evolving marketplace, it is essential to capture
the full dimensionality of the relationships among organizations,
people, products and brands. The three-worlds hypothesis9 of
philosopher of science Karl Popper10 — originally developed as a
conceptual tool to explore the mind-body problem in philosophy
— provides an excellent means of doing so. Popper’s World 1 is
defined as the realm of physical objects, states and systems; World
2 is the realm of subjective experiences involving thoughts, emo-
tions and perceptions; and World 3 is the world of “culture”
rooted in objective knowledge, science, language, literature, and
so on. (See “The Relationship of Products, Brands and Culture.”)
In the context of brands, the three realms of relevance are:
(World 1) manifest goods and services; (World 2) individual
thoughts, emotions, needs, wants and perceptions; and (World 3)
collective knowledge and images concerning brands.
Popper’s framework highlights the relationships among prod-
ucts, individuals and brands. It shows that the effect of a manifest
product or service in World 1 (for example, an Apple computer
with its familiar logo) on the collective knowledge of the brand
in World 3 (the brand name Apple, Apple Computer, Inc.’s share
price, its product specifications, its documented history etc.) is
always mediated by, and thus a function of, intervening responses
by individuals (World 2).
The framework also indicates that attempts to modify Worlds
1 and 3 — for example, by repositioning a brand — will always
implicate the subjective worlds of the individuals managing and
involved in the process, as well as the worlds of customers and
other stakeholders in World 2. Further, it reveals that these changes
can never entirely determine one individual’s World 2; that is, the
meaning attributed to the brand by a specific customer.
This implies that brands are always part manifest (World 1)
and part abstract (Worlds 2 and 3) and that the meanings that
individuals attach to brands can range from the primarily func-
tional (in the sense of what the branded offering can do in World
1) to the primarily enacted (what the branded offering can mean
in World 3). The meanings associated with a brand in World 3 are
always multiple and always equivocal because such meanings re-
flect individual differences in World 2. At the simplest level, what
the brand means to the organization and its members may differ
from what it means to its target customers or to other stakehold-
ers, including the public at large. As such, an individual’s brand
meaning and experience can never be entirely determined by the
conscious intention or volition of others.
Dr. Martens shoes illustrate the three-worlds model as well as
the fact that the same brand can have multiple meanings to dif-
ferent stakeholders. The ruggedly constructed, air-cushioned
product (World 1, the physical) made by R. Griggs Ltd. became a
brand (World 3, the abstract) with very different meanings to
different stakeholders (World 2, the individuals). To management
in the young British company in the early 1960s, the brand rep-
resented a sensible, durable shoe or boot, originally marketed to
police and postal workers. But the brand took off when it was
embraced by subculture groups, including punks and skinheads;
to them, it represented a jarring, attention-grabbing fashion
statement. And to the public at large, the brand soon came to
embody a nonconformist symbol of rebellion against authority.
Each constituency viewed the brand differently, and the brand
shifted over time from a singular emphasis on the footwear’s
physical qualities and performance to a complex image that
blended manifest qualities with abstract cultural interpretations.
Refining Brand Equity: Key Dimensions Popper’s three-worlds hypothesis highlights the fact that the role of
a brand involves overlaps among all three worlds. Thus, brands can
never be understood in and of themselves. They are not simply “cre-
ated,” “owned” or “used” by management. Rather, they have a life
and meaning beyond and, to some extent, independent of that in-
Brands have a life and meaning beyond and independent of that intended by their initiators. Apple’s Newton, abandoned by the company in the late 1990s, still sustains a lively grass-roots community.
B R A N D I N G
40 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2007
tended by their initiators. For example, Apple’s Newton digital
handheld device, abandoned by the company in the late 1990s, has
attracted and still sustains a lively grass-roots brand community.11
These considerations complicate our current conceptualiza-
tions of brand equity. At the simplest level, brand equity assesses
the value of a brand. Most managers understand the two current
perspectives: the financial and behavioral views. The former,
typically championed by consulting companies such as Inter-
brand Corp., often result in press reports claiming, for example,
that “Coke is the world’s most valuable brand, worth X billion
dollars.” The behavioral view typically uses surveys to determine
what a particular brand means to customers, how valuable it is to
them and how the answers compare to those for other brands.
These two perspectives are usually combined in a definition of
brand equity as “customers’ willingness to pay a differential for
one product over another when they are basically identical.”
The current preoccupation with brand equity is often traced
back to the takeover of the British chocolate company Rowntree
by Nestlé in the late 1980s.12 Many financial analysts and journal-
ists began to see that part of the motivation for many company
takeovers was the realization that the acquisition of brands was
more profitable than spending years and vast sums of money to
develop and nurture comparably successful brands. The shift in
emphasis from physical assets to brands — from Popper’s World
1 to his World 3 — was under way.
A more nuanced view of the value of a brand will distinguish
between brand equity, which pertains to the perceptions of a
brand, and value of the equity, which reflects the monetary value
of the brand to the company. We term these two aspects embod-
ied value and exchange value and combine them with a distinction
between value to whom and type of value. (See “A More Nuanced
View of Brand Equity.”)
The embodied value to the company describes the perceptions
and values that the company’s managers see in the brand. Of
course, even inside the company there is heterogeneity in these
perceptions. Employees’ perspectives on the brand may vary by
function and they’re unlikely to mesh with those of management,
much less those of the marketing department. Yet the contradic-
tion is this: Managers and employees alike are urged to manifest
or “live the brand” as if it were one unified, shared concept.
The management perspective may also not coincide with
those of external groups.
Customers will have their own take — witness the responses
to KitKat’s exotic flavors and to Apple’s Newton. Other external
audiences have their own sets of associations or embodied values:
The expectations of suppliers, workers or consumer activists may
differ significantly from those of brand-loyal customers, as
McDonald’s Corp., now challenged to pay higher wages to to-
mato pickers, can attest. The expectations of legislators or
regulators may well be influenced by such groups, as well as by
the company that owns the brand in question.
At the same time, the “exchange” value of the brand equity in
the product (or even in the company) depends on cash-flow
streams resulting from the company’s ability to use a brand to
acquire and retain customers — an outcome dependent not only
on the premium paid by a consumer for a branded good or ser-
vice above that for an unbranded version of the same product but
also on the number of customers willing to pay a particular price
and the number of units sold at that price (World 3).
For example, a bottle of fine French wine selling in the
United States for $100 can be said to have high customer ex-
change value for those willing to buy at that price, whereas the
company exchange value would be low because relatively few
customers are willing to pay such a price. Conversely, a mass-
market wine sold in high volumes at low cost, such as many of
those produced by E.&J. Gallo Winery, has low embodied value
and exchange value for customers and high company exchange
value for the producer.
We can develop this distinction further by mapping cus-
tomer equity against company equity. (See “A Typology of
Exchange Values.”) Gallo wines would clearly fall in the top
right-hand corner among the mass-market brands, along with
many well-known names such as Tide, Lipton and Heinz. By
contrast, Ferrari, Porsche, Perrier and Grolsch are solid bottom
left-hand specialty performers. Meanwhile, many brands that
have traditionally fallen in the top left-hand corner — with all
the disadvantages that parity status entails — have worked hard
to extricate themselves. Indeed, the revival of the Arm & Ham-
mer brand of the privately owned chemical company Church &
Dwight Co., Inc. demonstrates vividly that all is not lost even
It is possible to distinguish between brand equity, which
pertains to the perceptions of a brand, and value of the
equity, which reflects the monetary value of the brand to
the company.
A More Nuanced View of Brand Equity
Customer
Company
Exchange Value
Embodied Value
Type of Value
Value to Whom
Meaning of brand to customer
Meaning of brand to
organization
Premium customer is
willing to pay over unbranded
alternative
Brand's ability to attract customers less support costs
when your product is as unremarkable as baking soda. Until
Arm & Hammer seized the day, who knew that baking soda —
beyond its traditional service as tooth powder and antacid
— could also be used as carpet deodorant, swimming-pool
cleaner and kitty-litter freshener?
Of course, many companies seek the desirable bottom right-
hand “iconic” position exemplified by Microsoft, Coca-Cola,
Starbucks and Nike in recent years. There is the danger that as
former specialty brands attempt to become iconic, or are
deemed so by a significant number of stakeholders, their cus-
tomer-embodied value deteriorates and they become
mass-market brands. The once-coveted Halston and Pierre Car-
din fashion brands have suffered such a fate, while Martha
Stewart, Tommy Hilfiger and possibly even Tiffany appear to be
headed in the same direction.13
Introducing the Brand Manifold In mathematics and engineering, the term manifold refers to a
topological space or surface, and in physics it designates the
space-time continuum. Similarly, the notion of a brand manifold
suggests that brands have multiple dimensions: Their meaning
varies over time and according to a multiplicity of constituencies.
These two dimensions define a matrix of possibilities with which
managers must interact.
Temporal Factors Within a given cultural context, language and meaning are enmeshed in a continual process of evolution. The
significance of a brand will change continually: Pontiac and
Mercury mean something different to today’s car buyers than
they did to buyers in the 1950s, now that those models share the
roads with Nissans and Hyundais. The insight that brands are
rooted in a broader context, taking their embodied meanings
from discourses with their relevant stakeholders, carries impor-
tant implications. Brand signification is never unilaterally
created but always arises from dialogues in a wider linguistic
and cultural community composed of various participants. As
noted earlier, companies cannot so much manage a stable brand
image as negotiate an evolving one. This emphasis on commu-
nity, conversation and cultural change thereby assumes central
importance in the management of brand meanings. Such mean-
ings are temporal in two senses — the sense in which they
change over time and the sense in which their creation is a proc-
ess of longitudinal negotiation, with present meaning always
rooted in the past and future meaning always rooted in the
present. Thus, the stewardship of a brand focuses both on the
brand’s relationship with its past and on evolving new mean-
ings for the brand as it moves into its future.
To manage a brand’s evolution successfully requires that the
brand not lose its roots in the past. Rather, management must
find ways to reinterpret the past in terms of the future or, in a
complementary manner, to interpret the future in terms of the
past. In launching its new Maybach automobile, DaimlerChrysler
AG has attempted a similar approach: A lavish publication lauds
the history of Wilhelm Maybach, one of the original founders of
Daimler Motors, and his creations, using both German and
English on opposing pages, to strengthen the etiology of the
long-dormant brand.
That “everything old is new again” sentiment is just as visible
in BMW AG’s ad for its “grand touring tradition” from the 1980s.
Jaguar Cars Ltd. went even further with the introduction and
subsequent success of its XK models, using images of its famous
1960s E-Type model in the launch advertisements and incorpo-
rating many classic styling cues in the new car, right down to the
shape of its grille. Yet Ford Motor Co. recently failed to capitalize
on the retro appeal of the Thunderbird. Not only did the car’s
overall design not evolve in exciting directions, but the perfor-
mance of the overweight vehicle was mediocre at best. The point
is that it is crucial to emphasize ways in which a brand’s present
position draws on its past meanings.
Multiple Constituencies The second dimension of the brand mani- fold recognizes a company’s multiconstituency nature. It expands
upon the traditional distinction between company and customer
to encompass a variety of external and internal stakeholders.
Today, companies market almost as avidly to the investment
community, to government regulators and legislators, to suppli-
ers and to present and potential employees as they do to their
intermediary and final customers.
In expanding the concept of customers to embrace external
constituents and in thinking about the organization itself having
WINTER 2007 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 41
We can map customer equity against company equity. Gallo
wines, Tide detergent and Heinz ketchup would clearly fall
in the top right-hand corner while Ferrari, Perrier and
Grolsch are solid bottom left-hand specialty performers.
A Typology of Exchange Values
Low
High
HighLow Value of Company Equity
Value of Customer
Equity
Commodity
Specialty
Mass Market
Iconic
B R A N D I N G
internal constituents, we recognize the vastly more complicated
task of managing brands in the 21st century. These various stake-
holders have differing perceptions, values and expectations. Rather
than mediating a dialogue between company and customer, the
brands must be seen as pivotal in an expanded “multilogue.”
Putting the temporal and multiconstituency elements to-
gether, we can envision practical applications of the brand
manifold. (See “Exploring the Brand Manifold.”) As an example
of internal anchoring (lower left-hand corner), consider the case
of an offering whose designers consciously draw on relevant
brand-related meanings inherited from the past, as in the case of
the much-celebrated and recently resurrected MINI by BMW.
Where such meanings exemplify a more external anchoring
(lower right), we find associations with the past that thrive pri-
marily by virtue of the impression they make on customers, as
in the case of Chrysler Corp.’s retro-designed PT Cruiser and
Ford’s retro-styled Mustang. A more innovative form of internal
evolution (upper left) would occur, for example, when a brand
such as Porsche AG’s Cayenne sport utility vehicle offers ad-
vanced features that are perhaps best appreciated by the
company’s engineers, its skilled workers or other automotive
experts. If such features can be successfully communicated to
customers, the company also achieves external evolution of the
brand (upper right), as in the case of GM’s military-styled Hum-
mer vehicles. In effect, the companies just mentioned have used
brand-manifold principles in designing their products and
bringing them to market.
Managing Manifold Worlds So how best to manage with the brand manifold as much as any
brand can be managed? It is not easy. With the disappearance of
the distinction between products and brands, products have
become symbols in themselves. The signifier — the physical
product itself — has become the signified: A Bentley Continen-
tal car or a Coca-Cola drink or a Coach handbag is both a
product and a symbol.
Indeed, brands themselves have become product offerings. At
a store for aviation buffs in Carmel, California, one of the authors
found authentic first- and business-class Pan Am travel bags on
sale years after the airline’s demise. Apparently, the Pan Am brand
has survived Pan Am World Airways.
The boundaries between producer and consumer have also
44 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW WINTER 2007
The brand manifold reinforces the concept that brands have multiple dimensions — specifically, that they have multiple constitu-
encies and that their meanings evolve over time. BMW’s new MINI car exemplifies internal anchoring (lower left), where designers
consciously draw on relevant brand-related meanings from the past. Ford’s retro Mustang typifies external anchoring (lower right),
where echoes of the past thrive mostly because of the impression they make on customers.
Exploring the Brand Manifold
Innovate, evolve internal
embodiment and perceptions
Anchor, ground, contextualize
external embodiment
and perceptions
Innovate, evolve external
embodiment and perceptions
Anchor, ground, contextualize
internal embodiment
and perceptions
Past Brand Meanings • Anchor in history
• Continuity of meanings
Internal Brand Meanings • Manage internal
perceptions and embodiment
• Meaning as embodied by products and employees
Future Brand Meanings • Evolve new meanings
• Future brand meanings
External Brand Meanings • Manage external
perceptions and embodiment
• Meaning as perceived and embodied by customers
blurred. In many cases, managers who might have thought of
themselves as brand owners have become at best co-owners. In
fact, their customers now own the brand in a very tangible and
immediate sense. There is a powerful example in Harley-David-
son, Inc.’s14 brand, where Harley riders think of themselves as
co-producers of the brand with a strong say in the design of fu-
ture products, accessories and services. At another level, we find
open-source software brands such as JBoss, Inc. and Linux On-
Line, Inc.,15 where customers do actually co-produce both the
brand and the product.
There will continue to be challenges as long as branding re-
sides exclusively in the marketing department. At the
departmental level, strategic vision tends to vanish in the “brand
myopia” of day-to-day, short-term operational issues such as
brand-extension decisions, customer research, packaging design
and promotional tactics. Conversely, branding objectives drawn
from World 3 can have major tactical and strategic implications
for Worlds 1 & 2. A luxury image (World 3) may imply the use
of platinum or silk (World 1) or may entail the creation of a
prestige-oriented advertising theme (World 2). Think Cartier SA
or Hermès International.
The implications for marketing managers are evident. We are
certainly not the first to suggest that marketing executives need to
consider the strategic implications of branding decisions, but it is
news to many executives that customers and other constituencies
will change the meaning of a brand over time irrespective of how
it is perceived by the company. Thus, it is the responsibility of
every marketing executive to determine how to manage the
brand’s evolution. We believe that the brand manifold now gives
them a sharper tool that can help them implement this advice.
At the same time, senior managers in other functions such as
finance, human resources and operations must consider the
impact of their actions on their organizations’ brands. The be-
havior of senior managers can have a significant impact on the
brand perceptions of employees, customers, regulators, politi-
cians and others. Managers’ failures to understand a brand’s
embodied value can jeopardize shareholders’ interests and con-
ceivably their own jobs, as our Daewoo/Chevrolet example
illustrates. It is therefore incumbent on the chief executive offi-
cer, president and other top executives to acquire a deeper
understanding of branding issues and to see the quintessential
connections between those branding themes and the strategic
trajectories of the organizations.
In our experience, top corporate managers have embraced
the concept of brand equity. They also understand the desirabil-
ity of repeat buyers and of customer loyalty. But if they think
that equity and loyalty stem only from satisfaction (Popper’s
World 2), they neglect the necessary provisions (World 1) that
are essential to building a brand community based on trust and
customer value (World 3).
The brand manifold framework reflects the energetic ongoing
debate on the role of brands in the new millennium. It highlights
the fact that brands are very much alive and that they can change
rapidly, often in unpredictable ways. The framework also demon-
strates that brands are diverse, multidimensional entities
— co-creations of the groups they are targeted to as much as of
the producers themselves. Brands are embodied by products but
are enacted by customers and other participants in a process that
managers only partially control.
In short, a brand is protean and polyphonic, internal and ex-
ternal, past and future. Expressed through the instrument of a
brand manifold, a brand plays a potential symphony of meaning
for managers who are willing to listen.
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12. See for example, J.C. Ellert, D.G. Hyde and J.P. Killing, “Nestlé- Rowntree (A),” IMD Case 0111 (Lausanne, Switzerland: International Institute for Management Development, 2002).
13. T. Rozhon, “Men Ask: Who Needs to Buy Clothes,” New York Times, Sunday, June 8, 2003, sec. 3, p.1.
14. J.W. Schouten and J.H. McAlexander, “Subcultures of Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers,” Journal of Consumer Research 22, no. 1 (1995): 43–62.
15. Y. Benkler, “Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm,” The Yale Law Journal 112, no. 3 (2002):369-446.
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