Since the appearance of its initial slogan -- 'Just do it' -- Nike has cultivated the universal values associated with sports and the Olympic movement: surpassing oneself, determination, competition, accomplishment. This is where the brand's ethic, its vision of the world, and what it believes are situated.

What is the identity of a brand? Our first answer might be that it is what the brand 'says' to consumers -- making a distinction between what it says and how they understand it.

The notion of identity is still too little used by managers, and that's a shame, because to our way of thinking it offers some very useful and concrete glimpses into the essence of the brand phenomenon itself. It constitutes the foundation and the federating element of all the activities we have designated as being manifestations of the brand.

We sometimes have a tendency to confine brand identity to the intuitive, affective sphere, which the company's concrete and methodical processes cannot influence. Yet tools for analysis do exist, originating in the field of semiology, with which this area can be at least partially rationalized and provide very concrete lessons about managing a brand. . . 

Brand ethics and aesthetics

Of all the tools available today, semiology is, in our opinion and based on our experience, the discipline best suited to aiding a manager in defining, prolonging and defending the identity of a luxury brand. From our perspective as non-specialists but convinced users, we would like to take a moment to discuss this discipline.

First of all, what is semiology? Imagine two 'No Smoking' signs, one of which gets its message across better than the other. Is it possible to describe exactly what makes one more effective than the other, without the discussion becoming simply a matter of subjective tastes?

And is it possible to describe it in general terms, to aid us in, say, designing another type of sign (for example, a "No Parking" sign)? In broad terms, that is the project of semiology.

Its aim (according to Greimas) is to describe, as objectively as possible, the process of production of meaning, and generally of all the practices of signification that make up cultures. But it can be extended, Jean-Marie Floch adds, to a certain disposition of the mind, curious about anything that has (or could have) meaning.

If we accept the validity of applying semiotics to the study of brand identities, we are making the following basic premise: brands are systems that produce meaning...

The hinge

The first of these semiotic tools is the "hinge," a simple framework developed by Jean-Marie Floch to bring out the different levels of analysis or definition of a brand universe . . . . . .The use of the hinge is relatively simple. It aims at characterizing the brand's identity through its expression and its content -- that is, at giving a formal definition of its aesthetic and of its ethic.

The aesthetic study is fairly easy to put into practice, especially if the brand in question is a very "typed" one, where the colors, shapes and materials are resolutely baroque or classical. In this domain, the contribution of Jean-Marie Floch, who updated the work of Heinrich Wolfflin, has been essential.

Note that generally, the Northern European brands -- Jil Sander, Ikea, Helmut Lang, BMW -- and North American brands-Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Coach -- have an aesthetic of the classical type, characterised pictorially by: