Brand Society: How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle (review)

This book provides a comprehensive and convincing argument that the major brands that evolved in the twentieth century transformed the balance of power between producers and consumers. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, brands were viewed as being simply a part of advertising and marketing campaigns that emphasized the characteristics of the product being sold. During the twentieth century, many of today's most ubiquitous brands—Absolut, Bacardi, and Coca-Cola, in beverages; Apple, Benetton, Lego, and Nike in manufactured consumer products; and Deloitte, Federal Express, and Virgin in services—are also powerful brands because they turn consumption into a lifestyle choice that empowers consumers. Viewed from this perspective, it is pointless to believe that consumers are simply passive recipients of brand messaging because they determine what the brand message is.

Brand Society consists of nine chapters equally divided into three parts. The first part, "Brands and branding," sets out some key historical milestones in the evolution of modern branding and discusses the influence of the early pioneers such as Bill Bernbach and the formation of Doyle Dane Bernbach in the 1960s. A central argument advanced in this part is that brands are self-sustaining because consumers continuously reinterpret their message. This momentum is achieved in a variety of ways that include, for example, the ability of brands to restructure businesses to better internally represent consumer preferences; brands can operate as catalysts within corporations by facilitating the integration of strategy, organizational change, organizational culture, and marketing. Of particular importance is the emphasis on brands as signs: "a brand is something that emerges from a commodity by adding associations" (p. 41). However, as Martin Kornberger acknowledges, these associations are not always positive. Consider, for example, the use of Doc Martens by punk rockers in the early 1980s and the hijacking of Burberry by British football hooligans in the early 1990s. A further important argument in this part of the book is the crucial relationship between advertising and branding, especially the role of advertising as the mechanism by which culture and consumers' lifestyle preferences creates brands.

The second part, "How brands transform management," discusses the reciprocal relationship between the production and consumption of brands and the ways by which brands determine organizational culture through their interaction with consumers' lifestyle choices. According to Martin Kornbereger, brands are used by consumers to reinforce their identity. Compelling examples of this are provided in the analysis of "brand communities," for example, the greeting ritual practiced when one Harley Davidson rider passes another or the insider knowledge shared between Apple users. Conversely, firms' implementation of brand strategy becomes synonymous with cultural change. Consequently, the brand is the medium through which the external environment (consumers and culture) influences the internal environment of firms such that consumers and firms cocreate brand value.

It should be noted that Kornberger's analysis in the second part of the book does not only apply to individual companies but also is relevant to cities implementing brand-management strategies to improve their image. The city of Edinburgh is used as a case study to demonstrate how heritage can be used to promote positive images that generate strong and quantifiable economic benefits, for example, better skilled workforce and inward investment, together with the reputation-enhancing effects of a large tourist trade. In this context consider, for example, the substantial branding and marketing that accompanied the successful bids to host the Olympic games by the cities of Sydney, Beijing, and London.

In the final part of the book, "How brands transform lifestyle," Kornberger emphasizes the importance of brands to lifestyle choices and resolves the paradox of "freedom to choose" and "lifestyle choice": consumers are free to choose between different lifestyles but they must choose a lifestyle. For Kornberger, the increasing use of advertising to convey lifestyle was a masterstroke precisely because the message prescribed a set of choices that gave meaning to consumers' purchasing decisions...