Lifestyle Brand: A Guide to Aspirational Marketing tackles the fascinating question of why certain brands become so successful that consumers are drawn to them – even without the end-of-year sales, advertising campaigns and promotional efforts that lesser brands need for survival in the marketplace. These are the brands that consumers find essential and irreplaceable, for a world without them would darken their lives (p. 2).
The heart of the book focuses on brands that the authors place in the lifestyle category; however, understanding how lifestyle brands are unique takes a bit of grounding that is well worth the effort. In Chapter 2, authors Stefania Saviolo and Antonio Marazza draw from their different backgrounds of academia and management consulting to provide context for the way brands are built and to introduce readers to various models that measure brand value, including the Customer-Based Brand Equity model, the Brand Value Pyramid, Young & Rubicam’s Brand Asset Valuator and BrandZ (pp. 18-26). These models look at brands in different ways but provide important insights for understanding why consumers assign meaning to brands and become ambassadors, fans and brand champions.
Next, the authors take readers through a mapping of brands based on their ability to deliver functional, emotional and social benefits. Chapter 3 develops the concept of “Symbol Intensive Brands” – those that have emotional and social benefits, unlike those that rely solely on functional benefits. Among the five types of symbol intensive brands, authority and solution brands are highly respected leaders within their segment; however, the icon, cult and lifestyle brands have the advantage of intangible qualities that promote storytelling. For example, icon brands carry universal values such as elegance and status as exemplified by Chanel, Tiffany and Armani (p. 42), whereas cult brands appeal to a community of consumers who create a sense of belonging through their adoption. The most widely cited example is Harley-Davidson, with consumers preferring the brand over more technologically advanced bikes because the brand embraces their values of open roads and free spirit mythology (pp. 46-47). Finally, the authors bring readers to a discussion of lifestyle brands as “bearers of an ideology” that dictates the rules, indicates a way of life and expresses it in an original way (p. 48). Examples include Patagonia with an environmentally friendly way of life, Nike with the goal of pushing the limits and Volcom with the promise of “Youth Against Establishment”. A clear indication that a brand has reached lifestyle status is the use of a slogan that is more than a simple tagline. Instead, it is a call to action such as Nike’s “Just Do It!”
To address the confusion over the often misused “lifestyle” term, Saviolo and Marazza offer a definition in Chapter 4 that gets at the cultural meaning: “Lifestyle Brands describe who we are, what we believe, what tribe we belong to. They communicate our status and our aspirations. They indicate the way we deal with our life and sometimes reflect our own unconscious” (p. 60). The authors further identify three cornerstones of successful lifestyle brands – the background (credo and stories), manifesto (lifestyle proposition and codes) and expression (product, communication and experience) – which relate to the brand’s socially relevant beliefs and how they become meaningful to consumers across all touch points (p. 61).
In the fifth and final chapter, the authors offer four high-profile case studies of lifestyle brands – Apple, Diesel, Patagonia and Slow Food – as a way of showing the impact of visionary leadership and demonstrating the application of the three cornerstones of background, manifesto and expression. To build their case for why they count Diesel as a lifestyle brand, the authors explain that the background for Diesel originated in the 1980s as a niche jeans brand intended to be an avant-garde symbol of the oil crisis of the 1970s and was aimed at the Gen X segment, who rejected pre-packaged ideologies and were internationally homogeneous in their taste in movies and music but were also eager to adopt brands that help express themselves. “Diesel offers an irreverent ideology, subversive but always playful, which expresses itself through values […]” (pp. 99-100).
According to its manifesto, the spirit of the Diesel brand is, “Being able to be daring, go to the limit, and not be afraid to see and do things differently from others” (p. 100). The brand exemplified this spirit by starting a dialogue with customers through its “Guides to Successful Living” campaign, which the authors note is a “particularly ironic, disenchanted and cool way to see the world” (p. 101). The expression of the brand has always depended upon the worn look of the product, which was celebrated among Americans but originally looked upon as faulty craftsmanship by members of some cultures. The slogan “For Successful Living” was a parody of traditional post-World War II advertising “that promised a better life to those who bought a certain brand or product, a promise that can only be seen as ironic for Diesel’s disenchanted public” (p. 103).
Although visionary leadership is not one of the cornerstones, it appears to be a central element of a lifestyle brand’s success, for owner and founder Renzo Rosso claimed Diesel was his life rather than merely his company. Saviolo and Marazza conclude that one marker of Diesel’s success is that the brand never had to claim irreverence or being cool because those characteristics were part of the DNA. “It has always been cool and irreverent by doing what no other company dared” (p. 104).
The authors bring the book to a close by providing one of the most compelling and illuminating ways of evaluating brands. Although these questions probe for why some brands fail to reach lifestyle status, clarity regarding these points can lead to strengthening other categories of brands as well. The authors pose the following questions and offer solid recommendations in areas where the answers are “no”.
Do you know what you believe in?
Do you have stories that deserve to be told?
Is your Lifestyle Proposition still relevant?
Are all elements well connected to each other?
Do you show yourself for who you really are?
Is the organization able to transform its vision into reality?
Do you continue to nourish your initial vision? (pp. 120-124)
Lifestyle Brands: A Guide to Aspirational Marketing provides readers with a clear roadmap to building brands that is based on solid logic and relevant examples. Brand managers and strategists will find authentic value in the book, as also will academics who teach courses in marketing and advertising and are looking for a book on branding that offers the right mix of theory and real-world examples.
