Digital Mythos, Physical Products
Anyone who says you can’t buy class is doing it wrong. Bill Gates has gone from a reviled and monopolistic thief to one of the worlds most respected philanthropists in under a decade. Social proof works, a little to well.
We notice when it’s being leveraged, even if we don’t see anything particularly wrong with it. We’re social-proof aware but we’re also not willing or entirely capable of getting rid of the mechanism, so we drive up the price of activating it to defend ourselves.
If you’re Bill Gates you can afford the new price. If you’re everyone else you’re trying to figure out new ways to pay.
The currency of culture, of story, is also accepted.
Glenmorangie’s brand relied on The 16 Men of Tain, for years. 16 Scottish distillers perfecting the taste of one of the worlds most loved malt whiskeys, taking almost no breaks each year, working in one of the oldest distilleries in the world.
Scotland population is around 5.4 million. The world’s population is 7.8 billion. With less than a thousandth of a percent of the worlds population and 6 percent of the global market for it’s category, how talented must those 16 Men of Tain be?
They became a source of national pride in Scotland and this led to the brand obtaining an identity recognizable outside of it’s category, globally.
This took decades to accomplish, but only moments to communicate. The value of a legacy brand is the stories that one can search for in it’s history, not merely current brand awareness. Mythos as cultural currency. Digging through a longstanding companies history to reinvent a brand is a privilege only genuine history can afford a company.
I’ve never been in love with tradition, but perhaps there’s value in not being so quick to throw old cultures away.
