How Big Brands “Save” (Sometimes) Lives

• The statement "such and such a brand saved my life" is very common in popular culture, according to our partner The Conversation.

• Fans appropriate a brand in their daily lives through a very specific mechanism: “brand magnification”.

• This analysis was conducted by Gregorio Fuschillo, associate professor in marketing, Bernard Cova, teacher-researcher in marketing and sociology of consumption and Julien Cayla, professor of marketing.

YouTube is populated with fan videos of Harry Potter, My Little Pony, and many other brands that literally seem to have saved their lives.

On Facebook, some Lego enthusiasts have gone so far as to create a Facebook group called

with over 1300 members.

Around these famous bricks, we can also think of the career of David Aguilar, winner in 2020 of the first edition of the Lego Masters show with his prosthesis made thanks to them.

Have you ever heard someone say that a brand, we are talking about a commercial brand, saved his life?

This expression seems quite common in popular culture, for brands as well as for other things.

Just think of famous songs like “Last night a DJ saved my life” or the very recent “Your song saved my life” by U2.

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Our work has questioned the process.

The stories sometimes seem extreme, but they are also part of our relationship with brands.

​James and the Big Apple

When you face a crisis in your life, work on yourself seems to be essential.

When living conditions remain stable, the answers to identity questions indeed come quite automatically and instinctively, by inertia.

But in the face of events that deeply tear their well-being, job loss, serious health problems or family tragedies, individuals begin to give their all to reconstruct their damaged identities.

In these circumstances, consumers can appropriate a brand as a resource to put their lives back together.

Their life seems to merge with the brand.

And it is from this fusion that the

is born .

A fairly recent case, which has made the rounds of the Web, is that of James Rath.

Born with serious vision problems, James never had it easy at school.

He was bullied throughout his childhood and first attempted suicide when he was just 11 years old.

Adrift in sadness and depression, her future looked bleak.

However, when James received his first MacBook Pro on his 14th birthday, his life changed dramatically.

The Mac's zoom feature allowed him to see things he wouldn't otherwise be able to see.

He could finally read his textbooks and catch up on his homework.

With his Apple Watch, he could find his way around the street.

With his iPhone, he could read road signs.

Apple's accessibility features have completely transformed James' life.

He also created a new identity for himself, that of a director.

In 2017, he published a video on YouTube called "Apple saved my life" where he told his story.

The video goes around the web and is retweeted by Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The same year, the latter comes to meet him.

James now lives in Los Angeles and tries to find work in the film industry.

Magnification

The story may seem extreme and extravagant.

But James' journey, like that of others, offers a unique perspective on the potential that today's brands can have in people's lives, rebuilding them, or as they put it, "saving".

The question for the researcher is then: how?

To answer this, we followed for several years the lives of five fans of famous brands (Apple, Vespa, Playmobil, Nirvana and Disney) in order to decode the intertwining of their lives with the brand.

Our study has shown that fans appropriate the brand in their daily lives through a very specific mechanism: brand magnification.

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It is a mechanism by which the brand becomes a driving force in people's lives.

It functions as a lifeline for people to overcome deep crises and lead meaningful lives again.

In other words, brand magnification helps consumers get back on their feet.

It actually plays on three dimensions: material, narrative and social.

A social role

First, when people encounter unexpected life incidents, they engage in material identity work in an attempt to create continuity between who “they were” and who “they are”.

In doing so, as consumers, they reconstruct themselves by transforming, repairing and personalizing their consumer goods.

In such situations, material objects and experiences help people to take stock of their own existence between past, present and future.

“Playmobil allows me to live well today, and to continue, allowing me to eat well and live well.

He is the messiah!

»

Individuals also try to establish a new narrative linearity with which they can tell themselves coherently.

As consumers, they use brands and their products to facilitate the reconstruction of their life story.

Dramatic circumstances, such as serious illness, can shatter people's life stories as individuals lose their moorings and drift.

They then revise the story of their life to adapt to the new circumstances.

The marks can then appear as an aid.

“Every time I went to see a doctor or a surgeon, the first thing that came to mind was to convince them that the Vespa was good for me.

Because I was afraid of one thing, that they would say: “Now it's time for you to stop driving the Vespa!”

»

Finally, it is a social identity that can be reconstructed through brands and objects.

An event is also an opportunity to meet new people.

For example, when people face loss or damage to their home in a natural disaster, a sharing of material resources between neighbors often occurs.

With exchanges that help to build increasingly positive identities.

It's a time for fans to share their passion for the brand with others, and thus reconnect their social lives.

Our “BRANDS” file

To say that brands can play an important and beneficial role in people's lives goes against the common thought that makes them the worst expression of capitalism and consumerism in our contemporary societies.

The phenomenon observed does not relieve brands of all the problems they may cause.

However, it remains to be taken into account to produce a more nuanced vision of the social role of brands.

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This analysis was written by Gregorio Fuschillo, Associate Professor of Marketing at Kedge Business School (Bordeaux);

Bernard Cova, teacher-researcher in marketing and consumer sociology at Kedge Business School (Bordeaux);

Julien Cayla, professor of marketing at the Nanyang Business School (Singapore).

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