• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, October 4, 2004

I was recently handed a whole slew of books on marketing and one of these books was entitled "The Hero and The Outlaw; Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes," by Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson.

I started to peruse the book and I was hit by two concepts that may or may not have been the intended purposes of the book but were derived from my observations of the points they were making.

The first concept was that the development of a brand certainly taps into the psyche of the target audience and the preconceived notions they may have based on attention, behavior, and messaging exposure as they relate to mythology and culture.

The second was that many of the traditional brands that were developed through extremely effective ad campaigns from the 70s, 80s, and 90s would not be successful in today's world due to these same elements of attention, behavior, and messaging exposure, regardless of their mythological or cultural references.

All research points to the fact that brands have been successful in the past because the messaging of these brands provided a point of relevancy to the consumer and that their association with these brands further cements their decisions to continue to purchase.

Brand loyalty goes much further than whether the product is effective at cleaning your clothes and keeping your whites white. Technology has advanced far enough where there are only subtle, if any, differences between most common brands of packaged goods and typical services.

Brand loyalty depends heavily on your personal association with the brand. There are brands that consciously or subconsciously tap into almost mythological associations of the traditional definition of a hero or an outlaw, among other archetypes.

Tide is an example of a "hero" brand while Harley Davidson is the quintessential "outlaw" brand. The psychology behind these brands is quite interesting as they have, through years and years of research, come to a final conclusion that proves whether they are effective at creating loyalty in the eyes of the consumer.

The interesting point that I thought about was whether or not the landscape has changed far enough where the development of these brands is hindered by our own inability to focus. Has the attention span of the audience become so fragmented that you no longer have enough of it to make these associations? Is it possible that we are continuing to train the user to not pay attention to the point where brands will have difficult time of making these associations and therefore the loyalty to their brands will suffer?

Let's use an example from today, and one that you will hear me speak of in many different articles. The iPod has certainly developed a brand in a short amount of time, and whether it is due to the marketing or it is due to the product itself, it has definitely played off of the psyche of the audience.

Apple itself is a great example of an outlaw brand, so it's possible that the iPod just piggybacked onto this brand association for its own benefit. But can the iPod retain this image and its own success through the long haul? What happens when the competition catches up to the iPod and develops a sleek, unique, extremely effective product? Can the brand sustain that close of a competitor without caving in to price pressure or distribution pressure?

I would argue that many of these brands, if launched in today's market, would not be as successful. Would Avis' tag line of "We Try Harder" work in today's market? Would the attention span of the target allow enough time for another brand to be launched, sustained, and successful or would it fall by the wayside due to customer service, pricing, and ease of use? Are these elements more important now than they were before?

I think that in a less cluttered market, development of a brand can rely more on the advertising than on the pure usage of the product itself. In a market for most products and services, the messaging of the brand is what differentiates one thing from another.

In a cluttered market, where the audience has a shorter attention span, the product or service itself becomes more important than the message. The message may spur trial, but if the product or service does not deliver, the opportunity was wasted and the user may not return.

My point, albeit a tangled one to arrive at, is that development of brands in today's environment depends less on the messaging associations that are retrieved from the psyche of the audience participant and more from the associations with the interaction of the product.

The development of a hero or an outlaw comes from the experience of the brand. Today's consumer may not pay attention to the marketing messages, but may rely solely on the experience of the brand when in use.

What do you think?