Corporate brands with a heritage

Abstract

We fi rst recognised the value of heritage when we studied monarchies as corporate brands. 1,2 This case study led us to seek and study other brand situations where heritage seems to play an important role and adds value.By brand heritage , we mean a dimension of a brand ' s identity found in its track BACKGROUNDThe purpose of this conceptual paper based on case studies is to explore, investigate and defi ne heritage as a part of corporate brand identity. Our goals are to uncover heritage and to understand better how to activate, nurture and protect heritage in the process of corporate branding.

Forget the Past? Or History Matters? Selected Academic Perspectives on the Strategic Value of Organizational Pasts

“…This process requires proactive managers to "uncover" aspects of heritage through archival and consumer research, "activate" that heritage through product design and marketing communications, and "protect" that heritage through stewardship and attention to continuity. 79 …”

“…82 Heritage is an end product of that interpretive process, which "clarifies and makes the past relevant for contemporary contexts and purposes." 83 This heritage application makes history highly meaningful in corporate constructs and allows corporate history practitioners to continue to keep their archival content (and, by extension, their functions) current and relevant.…”

Corporate branding in a turbulent environment

“…In times of economic crisis, consumers particularly prefer brands with a heritage that denotes their credibility, reliability and authenticity. During the past few years, the question of brand heritage, namely how the past and present merge to create a corporate brand image, has gained growing interest in marketing research and managerial practice (for example, Brown et al , 2003 ;Urde et al , 2007 ). Wiedmann, Hennigs, Schmidt and Wuestefeld ' s study ties in with this recent research stream.…”

Introducing organisational heritage: Linking corporate heritage, organisational identity and organisational memory

“…Both concepts can be discriminated from the corporate identity and organisational identity notions as well as from various past-related concepts per se (e.g., history, memory; see Burghausen and Balmer 2014b). This is because they are both concerned not only with the past, and the present but concurrently with the prospective future too: omni-temporality is one of the defining precepts of heritage within the field : Urde et al 2007.…”

“…In conceptual and empirical terms, all organisations can be said to 'have a history' of sort but only a smaller number have a meaningful and valuable corporate heritage (Urde et al 2007). This can be viewed as the selectively appropriated and valorised past in the present and for the future vis-à-vis internal and external stakeholders (Burghausen and Balmer 2014b).…”