Cultural Strategy Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands

How do we explain the breakthrough market success of businesses like Nike, Starbucks, Ben and Jerry's, and Jack Daniel's? Conventional models of strategy and innovation simply don't work. The most influential ideas on innovation are shaped by the worldview of engineers and economists - build abetter mousetrap and the world will take notice. Holt and Cameron challenge this conventional wisdom and take an entirely different approach: champion a better ideology and the world will take notice as well. Holt and Cameron build a powerful new theory of cultural innovation. Brands in mature categories get locked into a form of cultural mimicry, what the authors call a cultural orthodoxy. Historical changes in society create demand for new culture - ideological opportunities that upend this orthodoxy.Cultural innovations repurpose cultural content lurking in subcultures to respond to this emerging demand, leapfrogging entrenched incumbents.Cultural Strategy guides managers and entrepreneurs on how to leverage ideological opportunities:* How managers can use culture to out-innovate their competitors * How entrepreneurs can identify new market opportunities that big companies miss * How underfunded challengers can win against category Goliaths * How technology businesses can avoid commoditization * How social entrepreneurs can develop businesses that appeal to more than just fellow activists * How subcultural brands can break out of the 'cultural chasm' to mass market success * How global brands can pursue cross-cultural strategies to succeed in local markets * How organizations can maximize their innovation capabilities by avoiding the brand bureaucracy trapWritten by leading authorities on branding in the world today, along with one of the advertising industry's leading visionaries, Cultural Strategy transforms what has always been treated as the "intuitive" side of market innovation into a systematic strategic discipline.

1. Rethinking Blue Oceans
Part I: Cultural Innovation Theory
2. Nike: Reinventing the American Dream
3. Jack Daniel's: Mythologizing the Company to Revive Frontier Masculinity
4. Ben & Jerry's: Provoking Ideological Flashpoints to Launch a Sustainable Business Myth
5. Starbucks: Trickling Down New Cultural Capital Codes
6. Patagonia: How Social Enterprises Cross the Cultural Chasm
7. Vitaminwater: Creating a "Better Mousetrap" with Myth
8. Marlboro: The Power of Cultural Codes
9. Cultural Innovation Theory
Part II: Applying the Cultural Strategy Model
10. Clearblue Pregnancy Tests: Branding a New Technology
11. Fat Tire Beer: Crossing the Cultural Chasm
12. Fuse Music Television: Challenging Incumbents with Cultural Jujitsu
13. Freelancers Union: Branding a Social Innovation
Part III: Organizing for Cultural Innovation
14. The Brand Bureaucracy and the Rise of Sciency Marketing
15. The Cultural Studio Forms Underground: Levi's 501s in Europe
16. The Cultural Studio Forms Above Ground: ESPN