Research: What are the characteristics of “cool” brands and how do “uncool” brands become “cool”?

8 min readFeb 10, 2020

A review of “Brand Coolness” by Caleb Warren, Rajeev Batra, Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro, and Richard P. Bagozzi (Published June 19, 2019)

Link to research paper: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022242919857698

Introduction

Brands that are considered “cool” have a common set of characteristics that make them “cool”. Overall, they must be both desirable (useful, energetic, and aesthetic appeal) and positively autonomous (original and authentic) along with being a mix or combination of high status, rebellious, subcultural, iconic, and or popular in the minds of society. Brands who are considered uncool, can become cool by focusing on one or more of the characteristics that they are lacking.

Marketers strive to create cool brands that have culture impact. Creating a cool brand is important because it impacts and predicts consumers overall attitude, positive feelings, and delight towards a brand. In addition, when a brand is perceived to be cool within culture, self-brand connections and brand love and customers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for and likelihood of discussing (word of mouth; WOM) a brand increases tremendously.

Becoming cool has a positive effect on a brands bottom line. The question becomes: What makes a brand cool and how do you create a cool brand? This research is important because every brand aims to become cool, but there hasn’t been systematically identified characteristics differentiating cool from uncool brands, nor have researchers identified how these characteristics change as brands move from being cool within a small subculture (i.e., niche cool) to the broader population.

In addition, the research provides a model for managers to drill down into which components of coolness are competitive strengths or weaknesses, which components are of greater importance in shaping overall coolness, and how these diagnostics analyses might vary across geographies, consumer segments, and even over time.

Research questions

This research seeks to answers (4) questions:

What characteristics are prototypical of cool brands?
What are the consequences of brand coolness?
How do the (8) characteristics and consequences of coolness change as brands move from niche cool to mass cool?
Can we develop a validated instrument to measure the component characteristics of cool brands?

Thing to understand

Niche cool brands refers to brands that are perceived to be cool by a particular subculture but that the masses have not yet adopted.
Mass cool brands refers to brands that are perceived to be cool by the general population.
Brand personality or the set of human characteristics associated with a brand, serves as a symbolic or self-expressive function for consumers, and consists of five core dimensions: sophistication, competence, ruggedness, excitement, and sincerity.
Self brand describes the process in which consumers match their own self-concept with the images of a certain brand.
Brand love is a broad brand relationship construct that includes current and desired self-identity.
Self-brand connections are used to construct one’s self or to communicate one’s self to others.
Narrative processing is defined as building connections between brands and the self.
Brand familiarity is a unidimensional construct that is directly related to the amount of time that has been spent processing information about the brand, regardless of the type or content of the processing that was involved.
Brand attitude is both what customers think and how strongly they feel. They may be completely familiar with your product, but may have an unfavorable — or at best, neutral — attitude.
WOM is shorthand for word-of-mouth.
WTP is shorthand for willingness-to-pay.

Hypothesis

This study identified (5) hypotheses related to brand coolness:

Brand coolness strengthens self-brand connections.
Consumers’ relationships with a cool brand might also extend beyond self-brand connections, to increase brand love.
Consumers feel greater pride from owning brands that they perceive as cool.
If brand coolness increases self-brand connections and brand love, consumers should be willing to purchase (WTP) more for the brand and want to tell others how great it is.
Because cool brands are high status, popular, and iconic, they will command high price premiums, be familiar to more consumers, and gain more exposure compared to brands that are not cool.

Methodology

Three qualitative studies using focus groups, depth interviews, and essays with consumers from North America and Europe.

Nine quantitative studies using focus groups, depth interviews, essay writing, surveys, and experiments to identify the higher-order structure of the characteristics of brand coolness that emerged in the qualitative research and to test their nomological relationships with related constructs. Each study asked respondents to evaluate a brand that they consider cool, a brand that they do not consider cool, or both. The first four studies were pretests, in which the researchers developed and refined the measures for the structural and nomological models.

Study findings

1. There are four key things to know about coolness.

coolness is subjective. Brands are only cool (or uncool) to the extent that consumers consider them as such.
coolness has positive valence (intrinsic attractiveness/”good”-ness) as most dictionaries describe cool as an interjection used to express approval, admiration, and acceptance.
cool people and things are autonomous, fighting conventions and norms (i.e., is rebellious), while attempting to be different by moving beyond conventions and norms (i.e., is original), and behaving consistently in the face of pressure to adapt to shifting trends.
coolness is dynamic in that the characteristics — and people — that consumers associate with cool brands appear to change over time and across different types of consumers.

2. There are ten themes, or characteristics, related to brand coolness.

usefulness is a positive quality that sets a brand apart from its competitors.
extraordinary is offering superior functional value.
aesthetically appealing is having an attractive and visually pleasing appearance
energetic is defined as possessing strong enthusiasm, energy, and vigor
high status is associated with social class, prestige, sophistication, and esteem
original is a tendency to be different, creative, and to do things that have not been done before.
authentic is behaving in a way that is consistent with or true to its perceived essence or roots
rebellious is a tendency to oppose, fight, subvert, or combat conventions and social norms
subcultural is associated with an autonomous group of people who are perceived to operate independent from and outside of mainstream society
iconic is widely recognized as a cultural symbol
popular is defined as Fashionable, trendy, and liked by most people

Not all of these characteristics are necessary for every brand and every consumer segment, but, increasing any of these characteristics tends to make the brand cooler. For example, a brand like Apple may index on more on aesthetically appealing and useful/extraordinary, rather than sub-culture.

3. Brand coolness can be understood by looking at its highest and first order factors.

Data revealed a final model of brand coolness consisting of two higher-order factors, which can be called desirability and positive autonomy, along with five first-order factors. The characteristics of useful, energetic, and aesthetic appeal load onto the sub-dimension of desirability; the two first-order factors of original and authentic load onto the sub-dimension of positive autonomy. Both desirability and positive autonomy are dimensions of higher-order brand coolness, along with high status, rebellious, subcultural, iconic, and popular, which load as first-order factors onto higher-order brand coolness.

4. To build a cool brand, marketers should focus on the characteristic or characteristics the brand is lacking.

If a brand is considered uncool, the brands’ image needs to be reintroduced and reinforced. The characteristics a brand will focus depends on its history, industry, and target customers. Follow the guidelines below.

Create breakthrough functional specs (e.g. being the first facial unlocking phone) or deliver an unsurpassed customer experience (e.g. Amazon) to be seen as extraordinary.
Create eye-popping designs to improve your atheistic appeal.
Focus on innovation projects that impact to be seen as energetic and original.
Remind customers of your history and the core values of your founders to be seen as authentic.
Find a subculture that you can authentically connect with to seem subcultural.
Hire influencers who have been known to challenge the norms to become more rebellious.
Create distinctive packaging, a memorable advertising style, or tell a brand myth that resonates with consumers to become iconic.

5. Brands cycle between a state of being uncool, niche cool and mass cool.

Cool brands change over time. Born as relatively obscure brands in outsider subcultures, cool brands often spread beyond their niche roots to become cool to the masses. Coolness can be distinguished between niche cool, mass cool and uncool.

Niche cool brands become cool within a particular sub-culture, who perceive the brand to be rebellious, autonomous, desirable, and high status. Members of the sub-culture adopt the brand as a way to distinguish themselves from the masses.
Mass cool brands break free from subcultural obscurity to become cool to the masses. Mass cool brands are seen as less rebellious, original, authentic, and extraordinary. Despite losing their autonomy, mass cool brands become more familiar, command a higher price premium and control a larger market share.
Uncool brands have lost their desirability and autonomy, becoming passe’.

Brand managers must make a self-assessment about how they are perceived (niche cool, mass cool, or uncool). An existing uncool brand might want to first try to become niche cool by engaging in behavior that makes them seem rebellious, original or authentic. To become niche cool, brands need to cultivate a close relationship to a particular subculture rather than target a mass market. After becoming niche cool, brands should try to boost their popularity to transition to mass cool but the brand will need to maintain its connection to subculture and its perceived autonomy so it does not entirely lose its cool.

The study found that compared to niche cool brands, mass cool brands were perceived to be less subcultural, authentic, rebellious, extraordinary, and aesthetically appealing, yet more popular and iconic.

In addition, people have been more exposed to and had shared, and intended to share, more WOM about mass cool brands compared to nice cool brands. Mass cool brands are more familiar in the marketplace and command higher prices than niche cool brands. However, mass cool brands deliver weaker self-brand connections, a lower WTP, and less desirable attitudes than niche cool brands.

Interesting facts

Most study participants (73%) noted that cool brands seem iconic or that they symbolize an important value, belief, or memory (only 8% of uncool brands were described as being iconic).

Most respondents similarly reported that cool brands were extraordinary or useful (76%), although this did not distinguish cool from uncool brands, as respondents also considered most uncool brands useful (71%).

Responses suggested that several additional characteristics that distinguish cool from uncool brands — examples include cool brands more likely to be described as being subcultural, original, aesthetically pleasing, popular, high status, and energetic over uncool brands.

The description of cool brands vs. non-cool brands:

subcultural (cool 44% vs. non-cool 7%)
original (cool 33% vs. non-cool 4%)
aesthetically appealing (cool 25% vs. non-cool 4%)
popular (cool 17% vs. non-cool 4%),
high status (cool 15% vs. non-cool 4%)
energetic (cool 8% vs. non-cool 0%)

Conclusion

I found this research interesting and important because we can often spot something or someone who is cool, but we don’t necessarily know why or know how to articulate the particular attributes that make it cool. The characteristics outlined in the study provide the vocabulary necessary to describe and a framework for building cool brands.

For more information, check out the paper here.