Co-Authored with Delphine Dion

Chanel may be the most famous French brand in the world. Coco Chanel, its founder, is one of France’s most recognizable icons—its perfume, No. 5, the world’s best-selling scent ever. And Karl Lagerfeld, its designer of 19 years, is perhaps the most quoted personality in the fashion business. (…) Lagerfeld was hired in 1983… His mandate was to resurrect the label. And while, season after season, he continues to design contemporary clothes, the root of each collection is the cardigan jacket suit that Chanel herself created in 1925. In the last decade, Chanel has continued to grow, introducing new perfumes, a sports collection, a watch line and a fine jewelry collection. (…) Designers will come and go, and Chanel will always be Chanel.[i] (New York Times, February, 2002; emphasis added.)

What is the implicit marketing strategy driving Chanel’s success? Behind this question lies another, about the management of a human brand, that is, a brand created around a person, here Coco Chanel. Marketers face two distinct strategic challenges linked to the corporality that distinguishes human from product brands. First, the people who anchor the human brand inevitably die; the loss of the founding human presence threatens the brand’s continuity. Second, the humans who personify brands may lose the performative edge (charisma, skill, creative spark) that produces their success (Luo et al. 2010). Therefore, two questions arise about the human brand. How should a human brand be managed over time, and in particular, how should it be managed as a human brand beyond the founder’s lifetime? These questions resonate with concerns about how to manage the succession of charismatic leaders. The latter, unresolved problem is noted in marketing and research about family companies (see Del Giudice 2017; Mehrotra, et al. 2011). In this study, we draw on medieval political theory and performativity theory to address the question of how to manage human brands over time.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic work, we examine human brand management in luxury, services, and mass-market goods. First, we extend the theory on branding by providing a new understanding of human brands and their management. Our conceptualization of human brands goes beyond the conventional marketing interest in celebrities whose lifestyles and biographies are mass mediatized. We redefine a human brand as one where the brand identity is a narrative construction developed around a charismatic person. We extend branding theory by investigating how management may prolong a human brand over time and transcend its founder’s lifespan. Theorizing human brand management as a temporal challenge extends existing branding theory. We show that, similar to monarchies, firms configure brand dynasties that enable firms to overcome the constraints of the human lifespan. A brand dynasty consists of a brand persona, a narrativized and mythologized construct built around the founder, and brand heir, who performs the brand, a couple whose performances are repeatedly  validated by qualified cultural intermediaries.

Second, we contribute to the literature on branding in a more comprehensive way by investigating brand performativity. Similar to the performative turn in strategy (Mintzberg and Waters 1985) we promote the concept of “brand as performance.” The performativity concept can help researchers develop a dynamic view of how brands are produced and performed in context. That is, we show that the brand heir performs the brand drawing on the cultural and material resources associated with the brand persona and while introducing meaningful variation into profile of the brand. This is a citational practice, to employ the language of performativity theory.

Finally, this research identifies new ways to manage human-centered brands at the strategic and operational levels. We highlight the contingencies governing success and failure in managing human brands. All the details  available on demand:

Eric Arnould, Aalto University Business School, eric.arnould@aalto.fi

[i]http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/24/magazine/the-power-behind-the-cologne.html. Accessed November 10, 2016.

The exceptional personal quality, the capacity to inspire a following, and the charismatic
‘aura’ characteristic of charismatic leaders are well known (Weber, 1915/1947). This
‘quality’ charismatics embody is of course ‘socially inscribed’ (Wieser et al., 2021, p. 8).
Following Weber, Kallis (2006) remarks charismatic legitimacy is based on followers’
voluntary subscription to a mobilising myth, that is, an ‘emotional belief in the leader’s
capacity to epitomise, further and pursue it’ (p. 31). Charisma is thus a relational concept,
an emotional attachment of followers to a persuasive figure, which Wieser et al. (2021)
term ‘entrainment’. Through the performance of charismatic authority, some charismatic
person brands induce ‘awe and inspiration’ (Fleck et al., 2014, p. 87) and a communal
relationship based on a high degree of entrainment (Dion & Arnould, 2011; Loroz & Braig,
2015; Wieser et al., 2021; Wohlfeil et al., 2019).

Like Wieser et al. (2021), Reh et al. (2017, p. 500) show that charismatic aura is
a synergistic effect of leaders’ behavioural signals. They also argue that ‘individuals
may . . . develop specific prototypes [persona] of charismatic leaders. In general, such
a prototype could encompass not only rhetorical qualities, but also physical characteristics
(i.e. embodied signals)’. In this vein, Hackley et al. (2012) analysed Simon Cowell’s
‘trickster’ persona. Similarly, Dion and Arnould (2011) showed that creative directors’
charismatic persona resides in a combination of qualities associated with the magician
(self-sacrifice, discipline, shape shifting, transformative capabilities) and modern artist
persona (aesthetic innovation, code-breaking capabilities), to which Parmentier and
Fischer (2021) add that creative directors are assessed on commercial effectiveness.
Unlike other forms of legitimacy, charismatic legitimacy depends upon the charismatic
person’s serial performances (Conger, 1993; Weber, 1915/1947; Wieser et al., 2021).
Consequently, prior research points to routinisation, hubris or narcissism, and overcommercialisation
as sources of charisma’s fragility (Cocker & Cronin, 2017; Fournier &
Eckhardt, 2019; Parmentier et al., 2013; Weber 1922/1978).

Most research on charismatic leadership and person branding focuses on individuals
where idiosyncrasy and instability are well documented (e.g. Carruthers, 2006; Fournier &
Eckhardt, 2019; Knittel & Stango, 2014). However, as Parmentier and Fischer (2021) also note
some luxury brands feature successful successions of charismatic brand heirs. Consider Dior,
Chanel, Gucci, Lanvin, St Laurent or Balenciaga to name a few. Dion and Arnould (2011,
p. 2014) showed that some (but not all) luxury brand strategies stand or fall on charismatic
creative directors’ legitimacy. But previous research on charismatic person brands has not
investigated whether and how firms manage to sustain the charismatic legitimacy of
successive charismatic heirs after death or loss of distinction.

Our analysis identifies three general managerial practices that together transfer
and sustain brand charismatic legitimacy (see Figure 1).
First, managing brand charismatic legitimacy over time entails crafting the brand
persona, that is, the cluster of symbols, objects, images, meanings, and myths created
around the brand founder. Management transforms the brand founder’s biography into
a web of specific cultural representations related to the brand founder. Management and
brand heirs actively craft the founder’s brand persona.

Second, the brand persona is reiterated and reinterpreted over time through brand
heirs’ repetitive performance of the brand persona. This position parallels Kantorowicz
(1957/1997 arguments about the challenges facing the royal dignitas, the living heir to
the monarchy. To maintain charismatic legitimacy, heirs perform the brand persona
creatively rather than routinely reproducing the founding brand persona’s style.

Third, brand dynasties rely on what Wickert and Schaefer (2015) term the ‘microengagement’
of myriad brand stewards who certify and promote the performance and
spread emotional commitment. In contrast to Suchman’s (1995) perspective, we maintain
that charismatic legitimacy is an institutional process requiring management to craft the
founder’s persona, guide brand heirs’ performances, and manage brand stewards’ assessment
of brand heirs’ performances. Consistent with previous research (Becker, 1982;
Hewer et al., 2013; Wieser et al., 2021), we argue that performance evaluation is intrinsic
to charismatic legitimacy.

Our analysis revisits the brand persona concept. Some recent research critiques the perspective that the human brand is a narrative construct. For instance, Wieser et al. (2021, pp. 10–11) argue that human brands ‘are real persons with human abilities and challenges’. Our position is that the concept of persona is crucial to understanding the intergenerational transmission of charismatic legitimacy from a brand founder to a brand heir. While brand founders were real living persons, previous scholarship makes it
clear that the myths build up around person brands like Picasso, Warhol, Heini Staudinger, or Martha Stewart were crucial to their legitimacy. Similarly, the myths built up around a deceased founder are as critical to the brand heir’s performances as is the assertion of the latter’s artistic and magical credibility (Dion & Arnould, 2011, p. 2014; Parmentier & Fischer, 2021). The charismatic legitimacy of the brand heir and the founder is a cocreated performance.

In sum, the charsimatic human brand persona like other brands is a performance in which material manifestations, stakeholder performances, and myths are combined through active agencies.

Co-authored with Delphine Dion.

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