BUILDING FASHION BRANDS THROUGH INTRINSICALLY ENGAGING NARRATIVES ™

We do not just buy fashion items. By integrating intrinsic functionality with predefined meaning we create and express the master narratives of our lives.

Intrinsically Engaging Narratives™ are capable of generating life. They express the motives which have helped us survive and grow during the course of evolution, and are spontaneously pursued for their own sake.

Applying, for the first time, a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the motives underpinning consumer behaviour in oveseventy categories of goods including fashion, BRAND AVIATORS™ has captured our fundamental human motives at the deepest levels of their deployment, all the way from:• their biological value • to the neurosystems they engage• to the cognitive operations and psychological

states they activate• to the major social reinforcers they cause and • to the rich hierarchy of inherent concepts they

infuse into our everyday life. This methodology helps marketers develop Intrinsically Engaging Narratives™.

CONNECT

CONTROL

The wheel of motives™

GROW

CARE

BALANCE

DESIRE

FEEL SAFE

SEEK

PLAY

CREATE

DESTROY

TRANSFORM

TM

Far from just

being tenebrous

and menacing,

our unconscious is

colourful and

bursting with life

Successful brands coherently express the very patterns of our psyche

* A book will shortly be published, extensively

analysing the motives underpinning 33 categories of

everyday consumer goods and our fundamental human motives. It puts forward the most integrated platform for engaging people to date.

What follows next is a brief analysis of the deep motives for buying fashion items. The motives are presented in order of increasing relative importance in line with their power to influence our buying decisions. The further we read, the stronger the associations they build in our mind, the more powerful their influence on the sales and profit in the fashion category.

EXPERIMENTATION: On an

initial level of motivation, we

are attracted to the new and

the different. What fashion

items satisfy is our:

• inborn restlessness,

• genetic tendency for

variety and,

• insatiable curiosity.

Liberating our subjectivity,

fashion helps us, ultimately,

get a glimpse of our real self.

ORDER: More significantly, helping us

gain control over our image fashion

helps us primordially structure ourselves

in front of a moving world. The rhythm

of new collections itself is a guarantee of

duration, it makes us aware of our

continuity: Following the seasons, we

refuse to arrest time. Fashion is one of

the cyclic rites humans have invented to

replace our lost contact with the nature’s

cycles.

Furthermore, fashion helps us feel

exclusive. Apart from making us feel

in control, fashion leverages our

physical capital and sends the right

message of economic and social

privilege. Luxury itself is a form of

security: Are pure refinement,

elegance, attention to detail not the

extreme opposite of disorder and

decomposition?

DEFIANCE: Fashion sells because it is

inherently disruptive. Fashion negates

what already exists. Through following

fashion we express our rebelliousness

and aggressiveness. The mind is hooked

when we know that an opportunity is

available only for a while.

PLAY: On a deeper layer,

what makes people buy

fashionable items is their

spontaneous orientation to

the moment, their buzzing

exaltation of life. Fashion is

futile, fugitive, temporal and

effervescent, always ironic,

sparkling and fanciful, an

empire of vagaries and of

artifice.

DESIRABILITY: Moving closer to the

heart of the matter, fashion

provides the hope of appearing

attractive and of being worthy of

love. Fashion involves the pleasure

of being observed by others.

Feeling sexier can be a big turn on

for others which can thus be a big

turn on for us.

ASPIRATION: Fashion items

act as trophies we deserve,

that enable us to realise

our potential, stand out,

create an impact. Fashion

becomes a convenient

manifestation of our

barbarian drive to excel

beyond our neighbour.

SELF-CREATION: Even more significantly,

some of the most successful brands embed

the capacity of fashion to make us feel

creative and express our character. In

doing so, they mark the essence of fashion

to help us crystallise our sense of self as

their own territory. Behind the desire of

the new and the modern lies our

unconscious preference to impose our

subjective existence upon the

environment. Killing our old self as soon as

we wear the new we participate in the

mechanism of discontinuous innovation

and creative destruction.

UNANIMITY: Fashion

connotes normality. By its

nature it is a collective

imitation, it represents the

influence of the majority.

Fashion favours equality.

As, it requires courage to

follow personal taste, we

feel more reassured

when we are lost in “the

lonely crowd”. Fashion

fosters homogeneity of

behaviour and similarity

of actions.

Participating in the motion of the world, the motion is cancelled

REJUVENATION: On an even more

profound layer of motivation, what

makes fashion appealing is the illusion

that we can defy time, and stay young

longer. What makes fashion sell is the

theme of perpetual rebirth. In following

the temporary nature of fashion and

embracing what is fresh and new, the

change which always keeps some

familiar elements gives us a sense of

relief: “I am alive, I am ok”. Thus,

knowing that we have maximized our

beauty potential, we are immersed in a

state of security until the next season

arrives. In this way, fashion creates and

sustains uncertainty, which in turn is

calmed by buying this season’s clothes.

METAMORPHOSIS: On the

innermost layer of human

motivation, fashion is

symbolism and constant

change. When we try to think

of movement or change, we

cannot help but conceive it

first as a series of individual

states of being or

“snapshots” of form.

Fashion is a discontinuation of

separate entities, an activity

that evades time. It has no

density and consists of magic

moments that abruptly

extinguish themselves. As

everything in existence

appears and disappears,

fashion is the modus operandiof our perceived universe.

Fashion continuously enables us

to reveal another aspect of our

character. The greater the

variety of looks we assume, the

more fascinating we become,

leaving ourselves and others

awestruck each and every time.

This map illustrates

the way some major

fashion brands are

positioned in the

consumers’ mind

The brands which effectively embed the deeper motives and the inherent concepts that dominate our behaviourrelated to fashion are most competitively positioned to achieve sustained growth

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