Chapter 7

Mergers  and synergy

The Creation of Commercial Utopias

Synergy?

  As Branson suggests, is about much more than old-style cross-promotion; it is about using ever-expanding networks of brand extensions to spin a self-sustaining lifestyle web. 

Distribution networks

Phones and Internet companies are leaping into content production.

Superstores: Stepping Inside the Brand

It was the Walt Disney Company, the inventor of modern branding, that created the model for the branded superstore, opening the first Disney Store in 1984.

The general idea is to create a venue that is:

*Part shopping centre

*Part amusement park

   *Part multimedia extravaganza (an advertisement more potent and evocative than a hundred billboards)

"Creating a destination"

Branded Villages: Moving into the Brand

The stores are only the beginning, the first phase in an evolution from experiential shopping to living the fully branded experience.

In a superstore, "the lights, the music, the furniture, the cast of clerks create a feeling not unlike a play in which you, the shopper, are given a leading role.

"The emotional power of these enclaves rests in their ability to capture a nostalgic longing, then pump up the intensity"

As superstores adopt the production values and special effects of Hollywood, small business is getting caught between the deep discounting of the Wal- Marts and on-line retailers like Amazon.com.