Been catching up on some reading recently, including this interesting little number about how things fall under the sway of fashion.
Lieberson looks at how the popularity of certain names changes over time and deduces some general principles of how things move from being unchanging customs to changing fashions: clothes, decor, manners, scientific research and so on. And what influences the changes once they become fashions. All of which feels kind of relevant to helping brands become - and stay - popular.
He concludes there are three groups of influences:
1. External events (such as technological advances, industrialisation, economic depression and so on).
2. Internal mechanisms (the most obvious of which are the forces of differentiation and immitation amongst different social groups).
3. Idiosyncratic historical developments.
The example he gives of this last type of influence is the way that Adolf is no longer considered as a name; its meaning had been "contaminated". This concept of contamination - as opposed to something we might spout like, say, "significant negative associations" - seemed a potentially interesting way of looking at brands and led to some heated debate at Staufenberger Towers.
We started thinking of other types of contamination.
Personalities: one of Team Staufenberger's current pin-ups, Robert McKee, points out that the fictional characters we most engage with are those that reveal their failings, imperfections and unappealing traits. It's more honest and makes them more believable. Conversely, we've all met people who just feel too nice.
Our bodies: there's loads of bacteria swimming around our bodies. Some of this is potentially very harmful, such as certain strains of meningitis, some of it is necessary for a healthy digestive system (recently rebranded as "friendly bacteria").
Air: oxygen makes up just 20% of the air we breathe. Admittedly, the rest of it isn't harmful but if the non-harmful proportion gets too big we're in trouble.
OK, we might be stretching the parallel here, but you get the idea.
The point is, in many quite fundamental areas humans thrive in, or are drawn to, things that are imperfect. Why should the same not be true of brands?
Yet in the process of managing brands - and their meaning - there are many voices telling us to remove all negatives, all contamination. Which, perhaps, isn't particularly realistic (link to Grant McC courtesy of Russel D).
But as anyone who's ever had to pick a name for a child will tell you, there very few without an existing - or potential - negative.
Perhaps we should learn to embrace some imperfection.
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