Introduction To Part 1: Understanding Brand Desire: Nicholas Ind

Copyright © 2016. Bloomsbury Business. All rights reserved.
May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S.
Introduction to Part 1:
Understanding brand desire
Nicholas Ind
That Obscure Object of Desire1
Luis Buñuel
Some years ago I was doing some work for adidas. As part of the project,
we did a workshop with some twenty-five people in Nuremberg,
southern Germany. In advance of the day we gave them some homework:
Think of a brand that you find particularly desirable. It could be a
product or service or company or even a cause. It could be
something you already have or something you aspire to own. The
important thing is that you feel an emotional connection to the
brand.
Bring the actual item or a photo/leaflet or advertisement along

with you. You should think why you find what you have chosen
desirable. At the beginning of the day we will discuss your choice
and why you think it is desirable.
The idea of the exercise was to get the participants to think about their
relationship to brands and to learn together about the attributes that
made for an emotional connection. My expectation was that they would
choose highly aspirational brands, such as Ferrari or Rolex, or a luxury
brand experience such as staying at the Hotel George V in Paris.
However, first up was Nespresso, after that Coca-Cola, Levi’s, the
or applicable copyright law.
publisher Vice, and then someone selected a small patisserie in their

home town of Lisbon. There were apps, cars, fashion brands (both
upscale and mainstream), white goods, games and consumer products
but no wince-inducing haute luxe products.2 When we discussed the
choices, some interesting themes emerged: admiration for the clarity
and distinctiveness of how some brands positioned themselves;
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2 Brand Desire
nostalgia for brands that somehow linked back to family and childhood
(that patisserie in Lisbon is a good example); the sensuality of experience
(true for car and fashion choices); the opportunity that some brands
allowed for participation (such as Nespresso through its club); and the
way brands reflect who you are – and who you might like to become.
There was plenty of desire, some aspiration but little fantasy for the
unattainable.
After the workshop, I told my co-author, Oriol, about how surprised I

was with the results. We thought that it would therefore be fun to
repeat the exercise. The participants in Nuremberg were very
international in their profile and mostly young, but they all worked for
adidas. What about an older audience with different backgrounds? So,
we did the exercise again in Paris with more senior people and then in
other cities with different groups. The results were pretty much the
same. This made us reflect on the nature of brand desire – what is it?
And why are some brands better than others at stimulating it? We
wondered whether you can create brand desire in a managed way – or is
the idea of managing desire a contradiction. These are the questions
that we set out to research and describe. And the result of our work is
what you will find in this book, which is structured in two parts.
In the first part, which comprises Chapters 1 and 2, we outline the

nature of brand desire; the sources that stimulate consumers to crave
certain brands. We then look at desire from the organisational
perspective and the approaches that companies use. In the second part
of the book, we introduce and develop a model that can help to guide
an organisation in creating and sustaining brand desire. In structuring
our arguments we draw on our original research and relevant
management books and articles, but we also venture off into art, music,
literature and philosophy – not least because these subjects make
interesting and relevant points about the nature of desire, which can be
connected back to our theme of brand desire. Also, we believe that these
linkages, by stepping outside the field of brands, help to illuminate

what we might otherwise not see.
For the book, and in addition to the workshops, our research consisted
of interviews with managers, visits to shops, factories and museums of
desirable brands and a quantitative study into brand desire for nearly
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Part 1: Understanding brand desire 3
1,000 brands. This study, which covers both product and service brands,
demonstrates that brand owners need to build an emotional connectivity
with their customers. As we have previously conducted quantitative
and qualitative research studies into management attitudes to brand
building, consumer motivations towards co-creation and the value of
participation, we also connect to this earlier work where appropriate.
However, before launching into the content, take a moment to reflect
on what your most desirable brand might be and the reasons for your
choice.
Mine is Schindelhauer – it’s been the brand I have selected when I
explain about the idea of brand desire to others. Oriol’s is Moleskine – a
brand with an interesting story attached to it.
Schindelhauer
Unless you are into bicycles, you have probably never heard of this
brand. It’s a super desirable (at least in my opinion) German-made bike.
I didn’t start out wanting this brand of bike – in fact, I was trying to be
very rational and economical. I don’t cycle that much – just around the
city – so I figured all I needed was a functional bike with maybe seven or
eight gears. I went to a large sports shop, which had racks and racks of
bikes, and the salesman tried to sell me something with twenty-one
gears and lots of features – that turned me off. I then found this small
barber/fashion/bicycle shop called Dapper in a hip part of Oslo. It
looked more interesting – the environment was more like a craftsman’s
workshop than a retailer. The salesman was also the repair guy, and he
seemed to know a lot about the different bikes. Still thinking about
money and my likely usage I tried out a relatively lower-cost bike around
the streets – but it was a bit disappointing. Then, there, hanging on the
wall, like a piece of sculpture, was a Schindelhauer. I’d never heard of
the brand, but it looked beautiful, was finely made and had appealing
details, such as the stitched brown leather handlebar grips and the
innovative technology of the grease-free carbon-fibre drive system. The

salesman said it was the Porsche of bicycles – an association that piqued
my interest. But it was also four times the price of the bike I first looked
at. I baulked. Then I went home and started looking at videos on
YouTube and the Schindelhauer website.
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4 Desire Brand
Figure I.1 Schindelhauer Ludwig VIII.

Source: Schindelhauer.
The more I see, the more I want it. I have tried to reflect on why I have
gone from trying to be a rational buyer to lusting after something that
I can’t justify. I think it is several factors: the sensuality of the look and
the feel of the bike, the craft environment of the retailer, the associations
with another brand, and the desire to have something that is rare and a
bit exclusive. In my imagination, stirred by the videos of the bike, I see
myself cycling around town, admired by others for my brand choice. I
am still dreaming of it: I see a scene of imagined happiness. The question
of doubt though is whether I will be as happy as I believe the purchase
will make me feel. For as we will see in Chapter 1, desire is not sated by
buying the object of our desire – we always want more.
Oriol Iglesias
Moleskine
I have an enquiring mind, and I am quick to observe, question and
reflect on things. No doubt that is why I became a university professor
and a consultant. When I am talking to someone, attending a conference
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Part 1: Understanding brand desire 5
Figure I.2 Oriol’s Moleskine notebook.

Source: Oriol Iglesias.
or travelling, I often come across a piece of information that inspires

me and makes me think. At such moments I like to jot down my ideas

so that I can read them later and take them further. To do that, I could
use one of those small tablets. They are easy to carry around, but I find
them too cold and impersonal — especially for toying with the ideas
that inspire me. By contrast, jotting down my thoughts in my Moleskine
is a warm, personal experience.
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6 Desire Brand
As you can see, Moleskine is a brand for which I have a strong, long-
standing desire. In fact, the more I use my Moleskine notebooks, the
stronger my emotional bond with the brand becomes. My Moleskine
goes everywhere I do. There are various reasons for this brand desire.
First, Moleskine notebooks provide me with a personal space in which
to set down and link my thoughts, reflections, ideas and inspirations.
Second, writing in the notebook is more leisurely than tapping away on
a tablet. That gives me time to think as I put pen to paper. Third, the
notebook’s velvety cover and the elastic band to keep it closed give a
sensual feel that I miss in tablets. Last but not least, I must admit that
the brand’s storytelling and mystique are highly seductive. I feel my
Moleskine links me to early twentieth-century writers, artists and
intellectuals, such as Ernest Hemingway and Picasso, who also used
notebooks to jot down their ideas and thoughts.
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Chapter 1
The foundations of brand
desire
I desire, therefore I am.
Jacques Lacan
Organisations want customers, employees and other stakeholders to be
emotionally engaged: to desire their brands more than those of the
competition. This is about both delivering a functional experience and
an emotional benefit that drives people to first try a brand and to come
back for more. Brand desire then is a powerful motivating force that
outstrips needs and wants and sometimes encourages people to go
to surprising lengths to buy an object or experience. Generating the
sort of momentum that gets a brand talked about, categorised as
desirable and recommended by consumers to each other is nirvana – a
way of building brand equity and ensuring future cash flows. The
difficulty is to find the formula that makes this happen. Sometimes, a
coincidence of events generates desire for a time, but sustaining it is
more problematic. Brands can become iconic and then passé with equal
rapidity.
The aim of this book is to describe both the managerial philosophy and
the means by which desire can be generated and managed in an enduring
way so that the brand is not just flavour of the month but a long-term
success. To achieve this, organisations have to focus on involving their
internal and external stakeholders in building the brand and adopting
an approach that stresses such unlikely managerial attributes as
empathy, an ability to listen and humility. However, before we can begin
looking at how organisations can nurture and maintain desire for their
brands, we need to understand where consumer desire comes from.

This first chapter is devoted to understanding the nature of brand
desire, how it influences people’s lives and the impact it has on their
attitudes to consumption.
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8 Brand Desire
An introduction to brand desire

The meaning of ‘brand desire’ might appear self-evident. People in
workshops get it quite intuitively – even if takes them some time to filter
their options and arrive at the one brand that is their most desirable.
The word ‘brand’ is not so elusive – even if people do argue about what
it is. We can find plenty of definitions that debate the subtleties of its
meaning, but there is broad acceptance that brand is concerned with the
tangible and intangible attributes offered by a product or service that
provide a portfolio of meanings for customers (and other stakeholders).
In people’s minds ‘brand’ can be applied quite broadly – in workshops
people have chosen everything from Bon Jovi to Red Bull to Barcelona
Football Club. ‘Desire’ though is harder to pin down – not least because
it gets conflated with wants, wishes, likes, passion and love. There are
many articles and books on these connected terms but rather less on
desire.1 Yet desire is fundamentally important because it is the force that
encourages people to pursue that which they feel is important. Desire is
deeper than a want or a need and more immediate than love – although
it is not necessarily impulsive.2 Indeed, the way we talk about desire
makes it clear how it is different from other similar words:
We burn and are aflame with desire; we are pierced by or riddled with
desire; we are sick or ache with desire; we are tortured, tormented,
and racked by desire; we are possessed, seized, ravished, and overcome
by desire; we are mad, crazy, insane, giddy, blinded, or delirious with
desire; we are enraptured, enchanted, suffused, and enveloped by
desire; our desire is fierce, hot, intense, passionate, incandescent, and
irresistible; and we pine, languish, waste away, or die of unfulfilled
desire. Try substituting need or want in any of these metaphors and
the distinction becomes immediately apparent.3
Desire is a passionate emotion. As the words of the quotation suggest,

we feel desire in our bodies. We don’t decide to react in a certain way. We
just do.
If you want to see what embodied desire looks like, then consider Italian
sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s marvellously fluid
sculpture of the Ecstasy of St Theresa (1644–7) in the baroque Santa
Maria della Vittoria church in Rome.
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The foundations of brand desire 9
Figure 1.1 Ecstasy of St Theresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Source: Mohan Kohli.
With her head back, eyes closed and in rapture, St Theresa is meant to
be experiencing religious ecstasy: ‘the sweetness of this intense pain’.
She is clearly in thrall to a power that she cannot control. Generally, we
are not so enraptured when we walk down our local high street or shop
online, but we can sometimes feel the intensity of desire that
accompanies the sight of a product that touches something deep within
us. Whereas we can plan what we might want or need, a desire often
seems to come out of nowhere. The question is what stimulates this
desire? If we can better understand the magic of desire, we can then
better build brands that meet it.
The sources of desire

The first point to note is that desire is not something that we construct.
Desire is who we are. We may try to rationalise our desire after the fact
but feeling comes first: ‘A desire to buy something emerges from deep
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10 Brand Desire
within us, and once we are aware of the existence of this desire, we set
about concocting reasons why it is a sensible desire and we should act
upon it.’4
Playing on René Descartes’ ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am),
the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan wrote ‘Desidero, ergo sum’ (I desire,
therefore I am). As Lacan argues, it is what drives us – without desire we
become listless, passive and indifferent to the world. We become like
the aristocratic and cynical Stavrogin in Dostoevsky’s novel Demons,
who ‘lives in the most complete boredom: he has no more desires, for he
has possessed everything.’5 Most of us desire to be more than we are, to
attain new heights, to be recognised and to achieve fulfilment. We can
still think of things we would like to possess or experience, but more
generally we crave the feeling of desire: a ‘desire to desire’.6 This is also
why when we buy that new Apple iPhone we are only elated temporarily.
We easily become bored once the object becomes familiar. Desire
motivates our actions and inspires us to achieve things, but the
fulfilment of our desire often leaves us with a feeling of emptiness as
the anticipatory state we experienced before obtaining the object of
desire evaporates. Then desire re-emerges and something new inspires
us. Such is the importance of desire to us that we can feel a kind of
angst about the possibility of losing it.
Desire then is a central motivating force in many different aspects of
our lives, but when it comes to the idea of brand desire what does that
mean? It is the passionate feeling for acquisition and experience of a
product or service which is driven by a set of connected factors that are
intrinsic and also extrinsic. What we desire matters to both our sense of
identity and our image to others. Desire is who we are and who we
imagine ourselves to be. Indeed, the pragmatist philosopher and social
psychologist George Herbert Mead emphasised the connectedness of
these two elements. His argument was that our identities are formed in
childhood when we come to understand ourselves through the way we
relate to others and what we hear about ourselves. This creates a

storyline that defines us. As Mead observes, ‘The individual finds
himself acting with reference to himself as he acts towards others.’7 The
sense of identity is never static of course – we continuously make
ourselves through the dialogue we have between who we think we are
and how we believe others see us. Both these elements are important
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Bring the actual item or a photo/leaflet or advertisement along

publisher Vice, and then someone selected a small patisserie in their

After the workshop, I told my co-author, Oriol, about how surprised I

In the first part, which comprises Chapters 1 and 2, we outline the

linkages, by stepping outside the field of brands, help to illuminate

Part 1: Understanding brand desire 3

innovative technology of the grease-free carbon-fibre drive system. The

Figure I.1 Schindelhauer Ludwig VIII.

Part 1: Understanding brand desire 5

Figure I.2 Oriol’s Moleskine notebook.

or travelling, I often come across a piece of information that inspires

me and makes me think. At such moments I like to jot down my ideas

brands, we need to understand where consumer desire comes from.

An introduction to brand desire

Desire is a passionate emotion. As the words of the quotation suggest,

The foundations of brand desire 9

Figure 1.1 Ecstasy of St Theresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

The sources of desire

relate to others and what we hear about ourselves. This creates a

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