Georges Lewi

Biography

With a dual background in classics and marketing, Georges Lewi soon became interested in the life of brands, and began his first research work on brand life cycles with his first book, Sale temps pour les marques. He analyzes a paradoxical phenomenon: some young brands age prematurely, while hundred-year-old brands are doing very well. Now the author of some fifteen books, he is considered one of Europe’s leading branding specialists. He has taught at the Haute école de commerce (HEC) in Paris, at CELSA (École des hautes études en sciences de l’information et de la communication, Université Paris 4 – Sorbonne), and has lectured and consulted for major corporations, where he has handled some 500 cases. His work on storytelling has won him numerous awards.

Conference: Can brands get younger?

Marketing has accustomed companies and consumers to product life-cycle management. A company launches a product, exploits it for as long as possible and then, faced with its predicted obsolescence (when it doesn’t cause it), drops it and launches a new one. But brands are made to last. As if they escaped human time. The life cycle of a brand is inexorably divided into three phases, each of which requires a rejuvenating treatment. The first, the time of heroism, is for young brands, some of which will age prematurely. Then comes the time of wisdom, that of the second generation, when each brand will have to understand its place in its market. Finally comes the time of myth, when, having found its place in a market, a brand must prove its legitimacy in society. Then comes, or not, the time of rejuvenation. For the brand will have to appeal to new generations… To achieve this, it must neither deny itself, nor stand still. The brand myth, like all myths, will have to reinvent itself while retaining its original power. This strange phenomenon teaches us as much about the human condition as it does about the rules of marketing…