There’s a great LENGTHY article recently in the NYT’s that discusses the issues of dead brands and their connection to the minds of consumers. Dead brands have an advantage in being resurrected in the market place because they are already embedded in the minds of consumers who have a loyalty, affinity or certain nostalgia about the brand. This happens frequently in the fashion industry where someone or a company will revive a heritage brand an bring it back to the market place to consumers who may remember it and also tap new consumers may be swayed by the perceived long history of the brand.
This happened recently with the Thomas Pink brand. In another older article of Old Gray Lady, reporter Mike Albo writes:
“According to the slightly vague biographical information available on the Web site, Thomas Pink was a tailor in the 1800’s well known for his hunting coats. The company says that the expression ‘in the pink’ originates with him. His legacy lay dormant in history until the 1980s when Peter, James and John Mullen, three enterprising brothers looking for an investment project, recognized the branding potential of his name and bought the rights to it. (I imagine the Peter, James and John to look like Jeremy Irons, Daniel Day-Lewis and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, in that order.) In 1999, the company was sold to the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
The brand may be trying to evoke a sense of Dickensian craftsmanship with its purchased history, but the appeal of the store is more about the marketing ingenuity of the Mullen Brothers and the acquiring power of LVMH than the Victorian ghost-tailor. Buying a luxury shirt here is buying into their vibrant view of the work world and celebrating how they transformed the name of an obscure clothier into a very successful franchise that boasts outposts in places like China, Dubai and Dublin. The bright natty shirts seem to flaunt a fearlessness and confidence in our global economy, especially if you are the kind who can invest in things and buy the rights to names.”
This shows the power that a brand name can have in the market place. The perception that one is buying into a fabled history gives the consumer some assurance or credibility than if the Mullen brothers had went with, say, the Mullen Brothers as a name instead of Thomas Pink.
Another area touched on in the Dead Brand article is that of licensing or more specifically over licensing.
“Too many such deals, or the wrong kinds, can boomerang: this happens with some regularity in the fashion world, when a famous designer name gets spread over so many products, with so little regard to quality, that the entire image of the brand sinks.”
This happened with some regularity in the fashion world in the 1980’s perhaps most notable with the Pierre Cardin brand which was ubiquitously strewn over various products from clothing that was far from haute couture to frying pans. There was a disconnect between the brand name and the products it was placed on eventually cheapening the entire brand as wary consumers weren’t sure what the brand meant.
Luxury brands are now working to prevent this as some step in the licensing game again most recently seen in the Dior Phone. The Dior company is conscientiously pricing the phone at a $5,000 price point to keep in step with the other goods sold by the luxury label.
It seems that Dior definitely does now the power of a brand name.
