Comments on: Beyond the brand icon model

By: Brian Phipps

Brian Phipps — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:58:15 +0000

romy — A brand iteration model breaks the brand into multiple value streams, all on a much smaller scale than an overriding brand icon, which is typically a symbolic monolith. These streams are created as value prototypes that can be co-created with customers, and iterated as necessary to create more value. Think of it as lots of brand value initiatives that are close to the customer, rather than a top-down brand idea broadcast via advertising.

Look at the Toyota Scion website for a glimpse at how this model works. The brand iteration model is more about building a brand culture from the ground up.

I’ve seen no reference to brand iteration models in academic research. Most research I’ve seen is still geared to very old-fashioned brand models.

By: romy

romy — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:42:58 +0000

Hi, can you clarify what the “brand iteration model” is? are these models referrred to in any academic sources

By: James Thomson

James Thomson — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 08:32:31 +0000

Brian I think we are basing both our brand and the very physical fabric of that brands distillery or ‘shrine’ (which we are building from scratch) as such a tool that allows the customer to become the iconic customer. By building the brand around a club of 1250 commited founders, who are consumers who commit to the cost of making, or paying for, 50 years of ‘their own’ whisky we have started on this path.

Experience (both in the mind and physically by visiting or even becoming a whisky maker at a whisky school) and individual expression exist already, in spades, in our club which has reached 300 members in over 30 countries. Even more interesting for such a ‘leap of faith’ starter in our industry is the loyalty that comes from opening up the whisky brand experience in such a way; It is both significant and surprising.

By: Brian Phipps

Brian Phipps — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 03:14:16 +0000

Even in a market as well defined as Scotch Whisky, I would think there’s still some new territory for creating an “iconic customer” that’s more than a brand symbol (Johnnie Walker) or a status symbol (generic executive), even though those have proven very powerful. I’d be thinking of whisky as an “enabler of superior personal context,” where the brand is more a proactive tool than a symbol. This might be something along the lines of:
“iPod” is to “music lover” as “brand X whisky” is to “_______.” The idea being that the brand actually enables a higher level of expression/fulfillment/being, which is what makes the customer “iconic.” With whisky you can’t really do this via the product proper (though the illusion is bracing), so the brand programs would need to do the work “off bottle.”

Along same lines, I don’t know if any distiller is doing much with brand platforms, where the platforms offer a directed customer experience that other distillers–and competing vodka’s, rum’s, etc.–can’t match. That would be one way of using the iconic customer as a competitive weapon.
I would think that at some point, the biggest threat to Scotch Whisky will not be another spirit, but someone who reinvents the drinking customer, however that plays out.

By: James Thomson

James Thomson — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 16:25:24 +0000

turning the customer into the icon is understood in my sector (Scotch Whisky). Johnnie Walker’s ‘keep walking’ brand positioning is saying this brand is the brand for the executive business guy on the move (upwards). Thats not backward looking ‘hills and heather’ iconography. Old brand distillers are keeping their established brands locked down so to not alienate what has worked (Single Malt Glenfiddich – No. 1 in the world) while launching a new brand (http://www.monkeyshoulder.com/) to talk to the younger consumer.

But still the industry is stuck in the past as much as any sector could be. They have such a global dominance they can remain profitable even while vodka’s, wine and bourbon snap at their heels