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.