by Jonah Berger
In sum, fashion brands do a lot to avoid piracy. Because they think it is bad for their business.
But could counterfeiting actually be a good thing? Might brands actually benefit from the existence of fakes?
When two law professors looked into this question, they found that the answer was counterintuitively yes.20 And the reason had everything to do with identity signaling.
People, particularly fashion-conscious ones, care about what their clothes communicate about them. They want to be in fashion, or at least not wear something out of style.
But, if the signal value of styles never changed, people would never need to buy anything new. They could just keep wearing the same Ugg boots or skinny ties year after year. If Ugg boots and skinny ties always signaled cool, people would have no reason to exchange those items for something else. People could keep wearing the same stuff until it wore out.
This arrangement might make most consumers happy, but retailers and manufacturers probably wouldn’t feel the same way. Revenues would drop and jobs would be lost.
Enter counterfeiters to save the day.
By making and distributing knockoffs, piracy speeds obsolescence. Inferior copies may tarnish the original article, but, by broadening availability, counterfeits also change what it means to wear a style or brand. If anyone can buy what looks like this season’s Louis Vuitton bag, then the signal sent by carrying the bag erodes. As the discount prices allow the bag to diffuse widely, it no longer signals exclusive or trendsetter. Instead it comes to signal mass market or fashion follower. And, as a result, true fashionistas diverge and buy something new.
Language works the same way. Teenagers start using words like “yolo” or “dip.” Eventually their parents adopt the phrases to seem cool or hip. But adoption by outsiders changes the meaning. What once signaled cool starts to signal trying too hard. So teens abandon the phrase. And by the time Grandma starts saying she’s ready to dip out from Thanksgiving dinner, everyone has moved on to something else.
Companies want to show they’re ahead of the curve, so they glom on to management styles like Six Sigma and total quality management. Big or successful companies breed imitators, so smaller firms start copying anything they see “innovative” firms doing. But once enough imitators have copied, these approaches lose their value as signals that the firm is a pioneer. So firms that want to stand out have to move on.
Consequently, identity-signaling drives things to both catch on and die out. Some small set of early adopters start saying a particular phrase or using a particular management practice. If the early adopters are seen as cool, innovative, or desirable, others imitate them to try to signal the desired identity. And as more and more people flood in, the phrase, management practice, or other cultural item catches on and starts to become popular.
But once these later adopters jump in, the signal starts to change. What once was a signal of being cool or innovative starts to shift and signal something else. So the early adopters abandon the item to avoid signaling an undesired identity. Which only speeds up the signal change. Eventually, even the later adopters abandon the item as the original desired meaning has been lost. What was once popular is now the opposite.
Fashion cycles happen often, but counterfeiting helps speed the process. By ensuring its distribution, counterfeiting encourages fashions to die. But in so doing, piracy keeps consumers clamoring for new ones. As Shakespeare once quipped, “The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.”
PUTTING SOCIAL INFLUENCE TO WORK
While minority students avoiding achievement or people not getting medical care because of signaling concerns is disheartening, the silver lining is that these same concepts, when applied correctly, can be used to encourage good decisions.
Public service announcements, particularly in the health domain, often focus on information. Antismoking ads talk about the negative health effects of lighting up, and antidrug campaigns encourage parents to “talk to your kids about the dangers of drugs.” The notion is that information will change people’s minds. Tell people about the negative consequences of smoking, drugs, or unhealthy eating, and they’ll come around and do the right thing.
Unfortunately, more information doesn’t always lead to better decisions. Teens who smoke know about the risks, but they do it anyway. Kids know that candy and chips are bad for them, but that still doesn’t change their behavior.
Associating desired behaviors with aspiration groups, or desired identities, is often more effective. Popeye always ate spinach to make himself strong, and this association is believed to have boosted U.S. spinach consumption by a third.21 Advertisers have long recognized this, linking stars like Michael Jordan with everything from shoes to food to soft drinks. Want to be like Mike? This product will help. If someone people idolize is doing something, they’ll want to do it as well.III
Undesired identities can be equally effective. Binge drinking is a huge problem on college campuses. Students often drink more than they should, resulting in a variety of accidents and health issues.
To try and combat this problem, behavioral scientist Lindsay Rand and I shifted the identity some students associated with drinking.22 We went to college dormitories and put up posters featuring a geeky-looking guy (a cross between a hip-hop wannabe frat guy and the skipper from Gilligan’s Island) holding a drink. The posters reminded students to “think when you drink, no one wants to be mistaken for this guy.” By linking binge drinking to an identity students did not want to be associated with, we hoped to shift their behavior.
And it worked. Compared to other students shown posters with traditional information-based appeals (e.g., 1,700 college students die each year from alcohol related injuries, so “think when you drink, your health is important”), students who saw the posters linking binge drinking to an undesired identity reported drinking 50 percent less alcohol.
We used the same idea to get people to eat healthier. We approached patrons at a local restaurant and reminded some of them that a group they tended not to want to look like consumed a lot of junk food. People chose healthy salads instead of greasy burgers when junk food was associated with an identity they didn’t want to signal. Shifting the signal helped health.
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Similar identity-based interventions can be beneficial in a variety of contexts. When speaking about the negative effects of “acting white,” President Obama said that America needed to “eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.”
But changing the stereotype requires more than just changing what people say. It requires shifting the identity associated with academic achievement to one that more clearly features minority students.
In predominantly African-American schools, the negative link between academic achievement and social status is naturally weaker. Because most of the best-performing students in these schools are African-American, it diffuses any notion that doing well is acting white. Seeing black student after black student doing well makes it hard to think that doing well is a white thing.
Well-designed programs can also shift these signals. In the case of women and science, technology, engineering, and math, it can be as simple as slightly changing the environment. Women were much more interested in enrolling in a computer class when the classroom was decorated with general-interest magazines, plants, and other neutral décor (rather than stereotypically male things like Star Wars posters and science fiction books) or when they interacted with a computer science major who wore regular clothes (rather than a shirt that said I CODE, THEREFORE I AM). The neutral environment or nonstereotypical interaction partner increased women’s sense of belonging, making them feel like they fit in.23 Drawing attention to academically successful minority students, particularly those who are seen as popular, should have similar effects for race. The identity associated with a particular behavior or action is often just as important as the more “functional” value it provides.24
Stigma-associated signals ar
e particularly important for understanding health risk perception. The more susceptible people think they are to a disease, the more likely they are to get tested and change their behavior. Yet adding a stigmatized reason (e.g., unprotected sex) to a list of potential ways to catch a disease makes people paradoxically less likely to think they could have contracted the disease and less likely to get tested. Compared to people who were told the disease could be contracted in three non-stigmatized ways (e.g., exposure to a crowd), adding a stigmatized way to the list made people 60 percent less likely to think they were at risk for the disease. Adding an additional way to contract the disease should only increase risk of exposure (there are now more ways to get it), yet people felt less comfortable admitting vulnerability because the added cause carried stigma.25
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More generally, managing identity signals is key for making sure something not only catches on, but stays popular. If people are supporting a cause or buying a product because they like what it communicates about them, advocacy and sales can increase exponentially as people rush to jump on the bandwagon.
But things can come crashing down just as quickly. What was cool today may be passé tomorrow as people move on to the next hot issue or item.
British luxury brand Burberry faced just this issue. While the brand had upscale roots among greying executives who love to golf, by the early 2000s, the meaning had shifted. Burberry’s distinctive camel check pattern had become the uniform de rigueur for “chavs,” or white working-class soccer hooligans with a penchant for the bottle. Taxi drivers would refuse to pick up men in Burberry baseball caps, and by the time a drug-abusing soap actress, her daughter, and the daughter’s stroller appeared draped in the pattern, Burberry’s original patrons had fled to other brands.
To restore Burberry’s luster, new CEO Angela Ahrendts not only cracked down on counterfeiters, she toned down the check. Ahrendts removed the iconic plaid pattern from 90 percent of the product line. When the checkered pattern did appear, it appeared on the inside of coats rather than splashed all over the outside.
And the strategy worked. Earnings soared and the company reclaimed their identity. By making the branding less prominent, Burberry maintained its high-quality status, but shook off any hangers-on who only wanted the brand for what it signaled.
Another solution is to offer multiple product lines. Lots of families own a Toyota Camry because it is a safe, reliable car. But families driving it may turn other consumers off. If you just got a big promotion at work and want to show people you’ve made it, buying a car that signals suburban dad isn’t going to cut it.
So Toyota created Lexus. The Lexus brand has a more luxurious feel and offers higher-end cars at a higher price point. Part of this is about appealing to customers who want something fancier than a Camry. But part of it is also about identity. Lexus offers people who might have driven something like a Camry a way to distinguish themselves from the families in their Camrys. A way to move up, but not out of the Toyota brand.
Scion, another Toyota brand, does something similar for younger consumers who like to customize their rides. The cars themselves offer different features, but the symbolic offering is different as well. Driving a Scion signals something quite different from driving a Toyota, and the multiple sub-brands allows Toyota to retain these different segments by offering desired, albeit different, signals to each of them.
Meaning can also be managed by evoking broader identities. Republicans are wary of supporting a liberal cause and Democrats feel similarly about conservative ones. But framing something as a human rights issue helps it rise above partisan lines. This superordinate, or higher-level, identity is something more people can buy into. And because it evokes a broader identity, it’s less likely that people will avoid it.
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So far we’ve talked about two ways social influence impacts behavior: imitation and differentiation. People can do the same thing as others or do something different. But there is a third route as well. Doing both at the same time.
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I. While some people may regard the term “guido” as an ethnic slur, given members of the cast used such terms to refer to themselves, I’ve retained them here. But sincere apologies to anyone who might find the terms offensive.
II. The same phenomenon occurs in other product categories. T-shirts that said Armani Exchange or Abercrombie & Fitch on the front were easy for people to identify. Even shirts with more moderate branding (for example, a small “A|X” logo) were correctly identified around 75 percent of the time. But shirts without prominent branding were much harder to identify. Only 6 percent of observers correctly guessed the brand.
III. Children may not realize that Wonder Woman gets her power from cauliflower, or that the sports star they emulate loves beets, but sharing the news will increase kids’ consumption of vegetables and other healthy foods. One parent convinced their two young boys that broccoli looked like a dinosaur tree, and that by eating broccoli they could pretend they were long-necked dinosaurs. The dinosaur-loving kids thought that was pretty cool and told their friends, and soon their whole day care group loved broccoli. See Brian Wansink’s great book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (New York: Bantam, 2007).
4. Similar but Different
Twice a year, a secret meeting takes place somewhere in Europe. Representatives from various countries gather in a sparse room in an undisclosed location, debating for days until a decision is reached. Presentations are made, arguments volleyed, and sides taken.
It’s not a nuclear security meeting, or a G8 summit, but an event that some might argue has a bigger impact on our everyday life. The meeting to decide the Color of the Year.
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Since 1999, the prophets of color have met to anoint the shade that will rule runways and aisles for the next twelve months.
In 2014, it was color number 18-3224, otherwise known as Radiant Orchid. This vibrant shade of purple contains hints of pink, and was lauded for its ability to encourage “expanded creativity and originality.”
In 2013, the Color of the Year was Emerald, a lush green that signified well-being, balance, and harmony. These popular hues were preceded in prior years by colors such as Turquoise, Honeysuckle, and Tangerine Tango.
Pantone, a cross-industry color company that provides a reference guide for thousands of colors in a standardized format, convenes the meeting. Before the meeting, Pantone surveys manufacturers, retailers, and designers around the world to understand what colors they plan to use in the next year and what colors they see bubbling up around them. These insights are then organized, filtered, and debated by the attendees, with the results summarized in Pantoneview, a $750 publication purchased by everyone from Gap and Estée Lauder to package designers and the floral industry.I
These companies hope to decode what color will be hot next year. It’s tough enough to figure out whether boot-cut or skinny jeans will be popular, or whether flower buyers will be drawn to tulips or roses. But color adds even more complexity. Will consumers want purple tulips or red ones? Will grey jeans sell well or is black a safer bet?
Given the long lead times for producing products, color decisions need to be made months in advance. Farmers have to plant the right bulbs and factories have to order the right thread. And no one wants to be forced to discount stacks of unsold inventory at the end of the season.
But while betting on the right colors is vital, it’s also hard for any one company or designer to guess what color will be popular. Each business gets only a tiny slice of the full information pie. They see what people are buying in a small set of product categories in a small set of countries.
So companies look to Pantone to help them make educated guesses. Pantone collects a wide range of data from across the globe and provides a centralized, (hopefully) unbiased perspective. They give companies a broad sense of what is going on now, and what might be happening next. Predictions about which colors will be popular in the future.
If you look at the Colors of the Year over time, though, you notice an intriguing pattern. The year 2012’s color, Tangerine Tango, looks strikingly similar to Tigerlily, a previous Color of the Year winner. And unless you squint, 2010’s color, Turquoise, is a dead ringer for Blue Turquoise, the Color of the Year from a few years before.
Might there be some structure to cultural evolution? Could what’s popular now shape what becomes popular next?
PREDICTING THE NEXT BIG THING
Hits happen in all sorts of industries. There are blockbuster movies, unicorn start-ups, and platinum albums. The Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has sold over 125 million copies. Greek yogurt came out of nowhere to become one of the hottest foods in the United States.
Not surprisingly, predicting cultural trends is of huge interest to companies, consumers, and cultural critics alike. Will a new book be a hit or a flop? Will a particular public policy initiative catch on or fizzle fast? There are big rewards in being able to forecast success.
To get a leg up, companies build complex algorithms to try to predict whether a given product or song is catchy enough. So-called trend forecasters swirl the tea leaves and try to guess what will happen next.
But predicting the future is notoriously hard to do. As we know from the story of J. K. Rowling, even so-called “experts” have trouble identifying hits before they take off. For every “futurist” who prophesied the organic food movement, fifteen others predicted that “mechanized hugging booths” would be the wave of the future.
As the music research illustrated, people’s tendency to follow others makes success volatile. Forecasting how popular a song, food, or even color will be seems almost impossible. Why some things succeed and others fail often seems random.
