Many brands are embodied in the emblematic personality of their founder - sometimes an almost mythical collaborator: for example, the shoemaker Kihachiro Onitsuka does he still personify Asics which he founded to restore a sporting ideal to Japanese youth at the end of the 2nd World War.nde while the American basketball player Chuck Taylor he still evokes today Converse.
Communication shapes this personification, refining certain details ... or even inventing certain episodes from scratch: Chuck Taylor was certainly a good sportsman, but not at such a high level as the equipment manufacturer claims! Myths like these are built up over time, in small steps - that's what we call storytelling.
The founders' storytelling presents two risks.
The first is the survival of the company after the death of its founder. Limited to Asics, Onitsuka having taken care to inscribe the values he believed in in the brand itself: Anima Sana In Corpore Sano ("a healthy mind in a healthy body").
More complicated in the case of a Applewhich seems to be struggling to innovate after the death of Steve Jobsespecially as his successor Tim Cook does not enjoy extraordinary charisma: the company no longer really benefits from the creative genius of its founder.
The second risk is that of the founder's real personality, a risk made all the more serious by the fact that he or she will turn out to be whimsical and the media - both traditional and social - will take great pleasure in hitting the nail on the head.
The first emblematic example: Facebook via Mark Zuckerberg. For a long time, the social network adapted to the image of a borderline temperamental CEO, notably shaped by David Fincher in the film The Social Network What could be better than a 'retarded' and 'unstable' teenager to embody the new entrepreneurial model in this age of widespread disruption?
The fact remains that today Facebook has become a giant, and in the face of controversy and the need to respond to institutional bodies (the Senate), the brand cannot rely on a polarising personality alone - hence the spectacular metamorphosis of Zuckerberg who, during his many hearings following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, instead offered the image of a polite and respectful young man - what a change!
Yet the stock market fell by 20% in the middle of the summer!
Second example: Tesla - the T in NATU (Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla, Uber)!
Teslais Elon Musknot only the founder of the car company, but also of SpaceXas well as initiating numerous projects such as Hyperloop or The Boring Companyafter making his fortune with Paypalsold in 2002 to eBay a success story known and admired by geeks and other start-ups.
Except that in recent months, the whimsical entrepreneur seems to have lost control of everything: he has sent the small world of finance into a frenzy by announcing his intention to withdraw from the financial services sector. Tesla of the stock market before opening up about his condition "exhaustion ... and the share price plunged by nearly 9% in the process! As a result, he lost his job and had to pay a heavy fine.
It was prescient to choose the name of the pioneer of alternating current for the brand name ... especially as batteries generate direct current! Today, his work is recognised the world over, Nikola Tesla is dead "alone, penniless and in debt, leaving behind more than 300 patents and a reputation as a genius, visionary and half-mad scientist". as the following reminds us Wikipedia.
These examples show us that when a brand's image is too closely aligned with the personality of its founder, its storytelling can quickly slip out of the hands of marketing and communications ... much to the delight of the jokers on social media ... and the great displeasure of its investors!
