How do brands become icons?

The acknowledged professor Douglas Holt will be at CBS explaining how

In Douglas Holt’s latest book “How Brands Become Icons” the main message is the idea that the most well known brands, like Coca Cola, VW, Harley Davidson and Budweiser have achieved icon-status because they have managed to create stories that particularly address cultural changes and conflicts in society.

And when Holt on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 comes to CBS to meet the students he will elaborate further on this message.

From consistency over time to cultural power

“Douglas Holt will present an innovative cultural access to branding that shows that the traditional ways, insisting on consistency over time, do not appeal to the consumers over an extended period of time, if the cultural context is not changed. 

When famous brands like Coca Cola and Budweiser have managed to maintain their icon status it is because they have reacted to cultural changes in society”, explains Professor Per H. Hansen, who has instigated this visit of the acknowledged branding-expert to CBS.

Time and place:

The lecture ”How Brands Become Icons. The Principles of Cultural Branding” takes place from 14-16 on November 28th, 2006 in Danske Bank-Auditoriet, CBS, Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg.

The lecture is directed at students, researchers and brand-managers in business.

Douglas B. Holt is L’Oreal Professor of Marketing at Said Business School, Oxford University. He has an MBA from University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

Holt has worked as brand manager in the States and has been employed at Harvard Business School, before coming to Said Business School. Apart from his academic work he is also a partner in the agency, Amalgamated (New York), where they use Holt’s cultural branding theory for both commercial and non-profit clients. Holt has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research and Harvard Business Review.