Brands and the Challenge of Time1
Jean-Nol Kapferer HEC School of Marketing, Paris
In most companies, brand portfolios consist of some new brands and some longer-established not to say older brands. Although the latter are not generally renowned for eliciting passion from marketing departments and young managers, they still account for significant sales and profits in many cases.
Some very old brands always seem up-to-date, while other more recent brands already seem dated: compare, for example, Coca-Cola with Naf-Naf. How can we explain the difference between these brands? The problem resides in the balance between identity...