Essay on Brand Heritage: Leveraging the Power of a Brand's History to Drive Success

Introduction

Brand heritage is a marketing concept that suggests the appeal of products and services to clients can highly be influenced by historical characters of those brands (Hudson 2). This is true when looking at many of the global brands which were created more than one hundred years ago. Marketers make use of the company's founding dates on packages when describing the organization's history and celebrating the anniversaries. It shows that there are specific elements of brand heritage that drive the success of the products and services in the market. Brand heritage elements such as place, people, brand legend, and iconic products are usually used in supporting the attributes and status of the company and its products concerning aspects such as authenticity as well as pioneership. Brand heritage defines customer and brand identity (Iannone and Izzo, 163). Customers associate the products with their past, and that drives their affection to purchase or use the item. The essay examines a selected brand made in Italy to analyze and identify the elements that define the brand heritage. A discussion on the relevance of corporate museums as a reliable brand-building tool will also be provided.

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The Chosen Brand

The Ferrari Company is the selected brand for analysis using the five elements of brand heritage, including Brand heritage elements such as place, people, brand legend, and iconic products. The Ferrari is a company operating in the machinery industry to produce cars and specifically for luxury sports. The company is based in Maranello, Italy, and founded by Enzo Ferrari in the year 1939. Each Ferrari car is branded with the famous prancing horse, the logo of the company.

Analysis of the Ferrari Brand Heritage Elements

Iconic Products - Iconic products relate to the life of the founder of the company, collections, and all that contributes to the brands' history (Garzone and Giordano 52). Ferrari corporate museums that tell its history through the display of the elements that made the company a legendary in the car making industry. Ferrari supports brand legend by organizing initiatives for its customers and fans all over the world. The company signs in with other selected partners to manufacture different product lines sold in Ferrari shops. The company also creates Ferrari museums as well as theme parks as part of promoting its brand identity (Ferrari 1). One of the museums of Ferrari is in Maranello, and the other one is in Abu Dhabi. The museum in Maranello provides a platform for the future-focused Ferrari. Another museum is in Modena, the native city of Enzo Ferrari, to reveal the deep roots and history of the company in Italy. The museum in Abu Dhabi is a theme park that showcases the performance, excellence, passion, and innovation of Ferrari. Another theme park in Europe, The Ferrari land PortAventura reveals the real excitement of the Ferrari legend. It has attractions for the family, focusing on adrenaline and technology.

People - Ferrari places its people at the center of its marketing. Employees are at the center of the company's success in manufacturing quality care. The founder Enzo Ferrari stated that "Ferrari is made most of all by people" (Ferrari 1). Glocalization is an approach that the company uses to match the culture of the products and the target market. Ferrari manufactures cars for customers in the luxury sports industry. The founder of the company, Enzo Ferrari, coincides with the name of the Ferrari brand. The company focuses on developing its employees to ensure their skills match with innovation in the present world.

Place - Ferrari serves customers all over the world. Pavione and Pezzetti (263) stated that luxury brands leverage the opportunities offered through the mass-market by integrating various retail channels and refocusing their brands on the high-end segments. That helps in strengthening the brand perception, exclusivity, rarity, and aspirational value related to the brand prestige. Ferrari is a luxury company that focuses on innovation to meet the needs of customers all over the world. A global message conceived by the company that serves universally for all customers in the global market is, "We design and build all our cars in Maranello, Italy, but we sell them in over 60 markets worldwide through a network of 180 authorized dealers" (Ferrari 1). The country of origin "Made in Italy" is provided in all its machines to influence the customer's perception of the brand. The country of origin is transformed to become the image of the particular city where the product comes from (Garzone and Giordano 52). The place of origin for the brand is of importance to know where the products originate.

The brand legend is usually any story associated with the founder and the brand itself. These two are the source of inspiration for the creation of the iconic product (Garzone and Giordano 52). The Ferrari logo defines the brand legend, which is an icon of speed, luxury as well as style. The logo has a prancing horse, which is a symbol of Italian luxury, design, quality, exclusivity, and performance all over the world (Ferrari 1). Ferrari logo is a brand legend that has been built for decades based on the sporting success of the cars produced in the company.

The relevance of Corporate Museums as a Strong Brand Building ToolCorporate museums are useful marketing tools for building strong brands such as Ferrari. According to Iannone and Izzo (163), companies usually exhibit their history and identity within a corporate museum to give value to the brand heritage. Corporate museums give a better understanding and perspective of an organization's identity (Margolis and Hansen 277). Companies such as Ferrari make use of corporate museums to narrate their heritage and communicate with the internal and external stakeholders. For instance, Ferrari has corporate museums in Italy, Europe, and Abu Dhabi (Ferrari 1). In all these corporate museums, the company history is demonstrated as well as the brand uniqueness, performance, and innovation over the years. The corporate museum in Madeno, Italy, where Enzo Ferrari was born, presents a history of Ferrari and its roots as well as the legendary founder of the company. These efforts have helped in strengthening the Ferrari brand authenticity as well as credibility for all its customers all over the world.

According to Iannone and Izzo (163), corporate museums established by companies serve to communicate as well as share primary principles of a brand identity. For Ferrari, the "Made in Italy" is a primary brand identity for cars manufactured by this company. The company celebrates the "Made in Italy" values in its various locations of operations all over the world. That has enabled the company to serve many customers globally on over sixty markets using a network of authorized dealers that have already reached one hundred and eighty (Ferrari 1). The message branded in each of the luxury sports cars drives the marketing strategy and shapes the behavior of the company to producing quality and speed serving vehicles to its clients. The message presented in the corporate museums allows the Ferrari brand to deal with and emerging customer demands in the car machine industry as well as achieve a continuous renewal of technology to meet international market demands for the luxury sports car. As such, a corporate museum serves as an intermediate of the brand heritage and its stakeholders (Iannone and Izzo 163).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the brand heritage of an organization can be analyzed based on several elements, including place, people, brand legend, and iconic products. Ferrari is a brand whose brand heritage is well defined in its marketing strategies. The company's image and identity, as presented in the logo, quality, and speed of the cars manufactured is demonstrated in the heritage of the brand. The history of the company, its product offerings, core values, and customer services are well communicated in the corporate museum, which serves as a robust brand-building tool for Ferrari.

Works Cited

Ferrari. "About Us," 2020. https://corporate.ferrari.com/en/about-us/brand#Garzone, Giuliana., and Giordano, Walter. Discourse, communication, and the enterprise: Where business meets discourse. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2018. ISBN-10: 1-5275-0897-8

Iannone, Floriana., and Izzo, Francesco. Salvatore Ferragamo: An Italian Heritage Brand and Its Museum. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, vol.13, (2017), pp.163-175. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-016-0053-3

Margolis, Sheila, and Hansen, Carol. "A Model For Organizational Identity: Exploring a Path To Sustainability During Change." Human Resource Development Review, vol.1, (2002), no.3, pp.277-303. doi: 10.1177/1534484302013002

Pavione, Enrica, and Pezzetti, Roberta. "Emerging Competitive Strategies In The Luxury Sector: Exploring The Mass-Market Vs. Refocusing On The High-End Segment." Conference Proceedings. 2014. ISBN 9788890432743.