BRAND is A GENETIC PROGRAMME

A brand is both the memory and the future ofits products. The analogy with the genetic memory is central to understanding how brands function and should be managed. Indeed, the brand memory that develops contains the programme for all future evolution, the characteristics of upcoming models and their common traits, as well as the family resemblances transcending their diverse personalities. By understanding a brand’s programme, we can not only trace its legitimate territory but also the area in which it will be able to grow beyond the products that initially gave birth to it. The brand’s underlying programme indicates the purpose and meaning of both former and future products.

If it exists, this programme can be discovered by analysing the brand’s former production, communication and significant actions, since its inception. If a guideline or an implicit permanence exists, then it must show through. Research on brand identity has a double purpose: to analyse the brand’s production on the one hand and to analyse the reception, ie the image sent back by the market, on the other. The image is indeed a memory in itself so stable that it is difficult to modify it in the short run. This stability results from the selective perception described above. It also has a function: to create long-lasting references guiding consumers among the abundant supply ofconsumer goods. Thus, in men’s and Women’s ready-to-wear, each brand is labelled and catalogued. That is the reason why a company should never turn away from its image, which alone has managed to attract all the latest buyers and all the new ones, ie the most reliable ones for the future. Customer loyalty is created by respecting the brand features that initially seduced the buyers. If the products slacken off, weaken or show a ack ofinvestment and thus no longer meet customer expectations, better try to meet them again than to change expectations. In order to build customer loyalty rsd capitalise on it, brands must stay true to themselves,