Creating cool: The crafting, development, and management of cool brands

Abstract

For a brand, being cool can be an important driver of consumer purchase, yet little is known about how marketers can make a brand cool. This study aims to understand how cool brands are created and maintained. To this end, this paper leverages qualitative and quantitative studies to determine how cool brands are created, and in turn, develops a formative scale for measuring brand coolness. More specifically, in-depth interviews were conducted with 19 high-level sportswear/streetwear marketing practitioners to identify the five key drivers of coolness—Authenticity, Associations, Originality, Storytelling, and Accessibility. Based on these findings, a reliable and valid formative scale for cool is constructed which is shown to have a causal relationship with pre-existing (reflective) measures of cool. Further, these measures are demonstrated to influence consumers’ perception of brands and capture meanings and drivers of cool(ness) not previously identified. As the first study to explore marketers’ role in the cultural production of cool and the formative measures for cool, the findings provide valuable insights regarding how managers attempt to imbue their brands with cool.