Charismatic
brand management
according to
Max Weber

The holistic triad of charismatic branding can also be applied to pharmaceutical brands. An approach to modern brand management, according to Max Weber.
By Anselm Geserer, text & conception

Brands provide orientation. A seemingly intelligent statement is fundamentally empty, often mindlessly echoed.

If your goal is to gain orientation, reducing brands to their distinguishing factors would have the opposite outcome. You’d be faced with a myriad of options, and you’d have no idea what to choose. But that’s not the case, because brands display and advertise in their own unique character. This begs the question of how they can stand out while remaining authentic.

Brand charisma
The marketplace is flooded with competing products and brand products. Off-brand products, in particular, are indistinguishable and therefore interchangeable. Products that are interchangeable are ordinary – and humans are generally not conditioned to notice the ordinary, but the extraordinary and the different. However, communicating difference is a balancing act for brands, because they must remain authentic within that difference – their message must be believable. Hence, a good brand must communicate in a way that is both authentic and distinctive. This is what a brand needs to outshine others and to extend its radiance to its products and consumers.

From an observational standpoint, the radiating effects can be attributed to the halo effect, a cognitive bias that involves the transfer of qualities from one entity to another. (...)

From an analytical standpoint, there’s another way to make a brand shine. Radiance is often used as a synonym for charisma, a term that has become increasingly popular – not least due to the host of coaching courses that teach techniques purported to boost one’s personal charisma. But what is widely understood as charisma is actually a misinterpreted vogue word. Charisma can’t be learned – it develops.

Let’s digress for a moment: At the beginning of the 20th century, sociologist and economist Max Weber described three types of authority: rational-legal, traditional and charismatic. Legal authority requires laws, employees and public officials. Traditional authority is based on tradition, rulers and servants. Charismatic authority, however, is strangely unstructured and held together by an inner belief in a shared goal or vision. This strangely unstructured property is based on something that Weber describes as extraordinary.

The resilience of charisma
Things really start to get interesting when Max Weber states that objects and constructs can also have charisma, provided people believe in their extraordinary power. Brands can also become carriers of charisma by developing charismatic properties. Such brands stand out from the indistinguishable masses and outshine others because people believe in them and their exceptional quality, and because their vision is communicated to the outside world.

Charismatic brands don’t necessarily reflect a company’s vision. They don’t follow a logic – they follow an impulse. Charismatic brands are not created, they happen. It’s the enthusiasm for a product, the solution to a problem, an approach or a task. This shared goal allows for the development of charisma within the brand community. In this way, the company spirit is conveyed to everyone involved – speakers, employees, management, business partners, and, above all, customers and consumers. For a brand’s radiant charisma to develop from within, it takes this shared belief in the brand vision, the acceptance of specific shared values, and the development of a brand community.

The resilience of charisma
Trustworthiness and authenticity are essential elements of charisma. When the community stops believing in a brand’s special status, the brand not only loses its followers, it loses value. But there is a type of resilience that can, in terms of effect, be described as hysteresis. In cognitive psychology, this effect describes a stimulus of a certain category that is ideally assigned to that category for a long time, even if it changes. Products are therefore assigned to their original charisma category for as long as possible. But even this is primarily an observation, not an analysis. The interpretation of a charisma that takes effect over time is more compelling. The extraordinary has an aftereffect because those who have done something outstanding once are expected to be capable of doing something extraordinary again. So if a brand or a product was once extraordinary in a charismatic way, the products that follow won’t just benefit from the halo effect, but the entire brand will benefit from a self-developed resilience that will maintain its charisma, at least for a while. This means that brands inextricably linked to their reputation.

The triad of charismatic communication
For brand management to be charismatic, certain conditions need to be met. In order to be authentic and relevant to consumers and to their lives, the intrinsic, irrational dimension of brand charisma needs to be communicated in a special and charismatic way.

It has to center on something that cannot be easily expressed. It has to center on a special, an extraordinary quality. In this context, quality does not refer to the quality of the products themselves, but to the unique value that needs to be interwined with the brand vision. This irrational-visionary core needs to be wrapped up with the followers and their belief in, and dedication to, a shared vision. The triad of charismatic communication must be supported by media – the carriers and vehicles of the charisma – to provide the community with a suitable showcase for the extraordinary. This exhaustive triad must be transformed authentically into content and transferred to the latest communication media.

Without an extraordinary quality and vision, charisma will erode.

Without a community, charisma will erode.

Without authentic media and showcases, charisma will erode.

The basic difference and essential benefit of a charismatic brand is that consumers do not just have a rational belief in its benefits, but also follow the brand towards its vision.

Charisma in pharma communication
Charisma in pharma communication The Health Services and Products Advertising Act and the FSA Code of Conduct (Voluntary Self-Regulation for the Pharmaceutical Industry) place complex demands on us. The brand management for prescription pharmaceuticals is usually based on very rational and data-driven messages. Medical experts expect pharmaceutical companies to communicate specific factual information, which resembles manufacturing information, rather than a brand message. To meet those expectations, the brand concepts that have become established in the pharmaceutical industry are mostly rather technical. Herein lies a great opportunity because charismatic branding has the potential to communicate and exploit the manufacturer’s measurable, rational benefits as well as the seemingly irrational charismatic effects that a brand can radiate, and which are difficult – or impossible – to measure. Such effects can’t always be categorized or measured. But they still have value.

Not using them would be a pure waste.

Charismatic brand management according to Max Weber

“A good brand must communicate in a way that is authentic and distinctive.”

Charismatic
brand management
according to
Max Weber