The magic of the cultural brand

According to Harvey Hartman, a brand needs five elements to be named a cultural brand: social context, experience, community, products and services, and infrastructure sensibility. But the main element is actually observing how people change in the way they live, buy products, etc. so your product represents these changing values.

A good example is mentioned in the answer of question 4. Let’s take the Yankees. They are considered a cultural brand whether some other baseball clubs are not. This is because the Yankees have social context, experience, community (the first three elements of a cultural brand) but also traditions. One of them is their uniforms (white, blue and the NY symbol), which aren’t changed in the past 60 years and don’t have the names of the players on the back to symbolize they are one team.

Which is also interesting in the interview is that it’s easier for a small company to improve the attributes of a cultural brand. Big companies have traditions like the methods they use for branding.

Although you see in every article about branding the characteristics of a cultural brand mentioned, I think the main key to develop these brands is looking at the way consumers act and change their way of living so producers can adapt their product to the needs of the consumers.

Thaïsa Van Haesebroeck

http://www.hartman-group.com/hartbeat/the-magic-of-the-cultural-brand-an-interview-with-harvey-hartman