Communication Perspectives on a Luxury Brand Organization

Brigid Caroll: Rebranding or Identity—Discourse, Difference, and Design

Identity (who is Georg Jensen and who isn’t) permeates this case study. I would like to offer identity as the impetus for a leadership-oriented discussion on Georg Jensen drawing on dimensions of discourse, difference, and design. Identity highlights a number of paradoxes—local and global, continuity and change, luxury and staple—that together form a complex terrain that leadership needs to negotiate.

In this case study, rebranding is presented as a managerial prerogative and intentional, purposeful, and time-bounded activity. So we see Gord Ray undertake a formal “upmarket repositioning and rebranding,” conduct a “five-point brand identity research program,” produce a number of branding artifacts (brand book, corporate identity manual and presentations), and construct and implement “a brand management strategy.” That suggests several things about rebranding: It has a start and an end; it bears strong resemblance to a project in that it is finite, linear, and sequential; and it appears to privilege standardization (across locales, product lines, and imagery/marketing), coherence, and discontinuity (from previous branding narratives). These characteristics in fact would appear fairly typical of branding discussions in general (Alvesson, 1994).

In choosing to “read” this story as an identity story, we construct an alternative narrative. Identity, unlike branding, is increasingly seen as inherently multiple, fragmented, partial, precarious, and conflictual (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). In fact, we assume that anything has more than one identity and that such identities co-exist in movement, tension, struggle, and contradiction. Thus, identities as not comfortably entitative (individual or object-like) like brands, but relational and contextual. That means they are crafted “in-between” different individuals, groupings, and organizations and can be considered as inherently dynamic, social, and contextual.

Let’s look at Georg Jensen as a layering of identities. Georg Jensen has silver, craft, and hollow-ware trajectories; has values anchored in design, democracy, and art; carries associations of being iconic (“national treasure”), yet can be seen as both stylistic and artisan. Gord Ray is acutely aware of these different identity dimensions and seeks to build on them as a starting place for the rebranding initiative. However, from the outset, he is seeking “commonalities” or “a common thread” that the different representations may share. His rebranding approach is to immediately simplify what is complex, contradictory, and plural.

An identity approach would do the opposite. Weick (1979) tells us that if we want to be able to act with confidence and agility in a complex world, then we need to “complicate ourselves” as that ultimately gives us a greater repertoire of choices and actions (p. 261). Thus, an identity approach pulls us to complicating, not simplifying, as a leadership approach. If Gord Ray and Hans Kristian Højsgaard were prepared to complicate their approach to Georg Jensen’s identity, then they would pay attention to three things that we can call discourse, difference, and design.

Discourse may seem a difficult term but let’s define it quite simply as choices in language that construct or privilege certain realities over others Oswick, Keenoy, and Grant (2000). Choices of language that constitute and create the Georg Jensen brand are a strong theme in this case study. A branding approach pursues “brand essence” or a clear, shared, simple statement of the brand that is meant to “encapsulate” the Georg Jensen values and offer a point of singularity in moving forward. Thus the question, “Is there anything more seductive than purity?”

An identity approach, however, analyzes the discourse of Georg Jensen for contradiction and contestation. Those should not be viewed as negative but as valuable because they point to energy, animation, and innovation. The most problematic discursive site is around purity and its relationship with seduction and sensuality. However, as Gord Ray says “purity is a funny word” that can be “cold, stark and grimly minimal.” Lest anyone think that discourse does not have material and tangible consequences, then note that the rebranded shops enact such a tension and “sensuality seemed to be missing” in their design with the effect that they were “cold and not very inviting.” Gord Ray attributes this effect to an architectural brief that was incomplete at the time of store construction yet we could argue that “purity,” “seduction,” and “sensuality” do not fit neatly together and the differences between such discourses have created such an uncomfortable space.

This point takes us to difference, with difference vivid, powerful, and ultimately unresolved in this case study. Hans Kristian Højsgaard is pursuing a shared strategy, product portfolio, store layout, and culture across the very different geographic locations in which Georg Jensen is embedded. The overall objective of this initiative is to get those who work across Georg Jensen “on brand.” This then is represented as a strategic choice between binary dimensions such as Scandinavian versus international, accessible versus luxury, and living versus jewelry. However choice proves impossible. For instance, bulky household items are held out of site with “discrete notices” to alert customers, and cheaper gifts that “get people through the door” co-exist with expensive jewelry. Perhaps most tellingly, the differences between geographic regions remain core to the success of the stores such as an old-fashioned and heritage identity in Japan against a cool, contemporary vibe in Taiwan.

Yet the sentiment of getting “on the same page” pervades the case study, pursuing similarity as opposed to difference. An identity lens would suggest that difference cannot be buried but will keep manifesting itself. When difference persists as it does in Georg Jansen, then it needs to be actively engaged with (as opposed to ignoring it) and brought into debate and dialogue. In such differences are the seeds of novelty, innovation, and movement.

Novelty, innovation, and movement take us to design. A design ethos can be understood, at its simplest, in terms of emergence and creativity in contrast to the planning/doing/refining kind of sequence that is the dominant logic of the case study. This could create a dialogic, improvisational, and experimental flow of movement in the future. Thus, Gord Ray and Hans Kristian Højsgaard could assume they can’t see the entire trajectory of this initiative at the start but each intervention creates new learning, such new learning enables them to encounter problems and obstacles early and hence refine and improvise as they go. Such emergence is most evident with the store fit-outs as various styles are tried and partial fit-outs seem to offer a way of moving more quickly to a new identity.

Being sensitive to meaning, movement, and unresolved tensions within a broader identity frame could be understood as requiring more of a leadership than a management mind-set. The former could be understood as mobilizing others in the face of uncertainty and complexity where the latter could be understood as working with tried and true processes to bring order and structure to an issue (Grint, 2005; Heifetz, 1994). Gord Ray and Hans Kristian Højsgaard appear more in the latter mode than in the former. So if we took a leadership approach to what is still eluding them, then we could argue for some strategic alternatives that haven’t been tried. Just briefly those could involve

Dreams of sameness, simplicity, and standardization are fully understandable dreams. What I have suggested here is that they are management and branding dreams. They have their place certainly but increasingly do not work where contexts of complexity and contradiction and conflict create the “realities” having to be faced. Those contexts require leading not managing. This analysis has argued that we have such a context that requires a leadership prepared to work with identity, discourse, difference, and design in the pursuit of strategies and solutions that just don’t yet exist.

Gail T. Fairhurst and Flemming Holm: Response to the Georg Jensen Case

If ever there was a case study demonstrating the artificiality of the boundary between the internal communication of an organization and its external communication, Georg Jensen is it. Another “George,” George Cheney, reminded us of this artifice several years ago before the onslaught of organizational identity research when the field of communication was too neatly bifurcating itself into “organizational communication” and “public relations.” As we read the Georg Jensen case, we were similarly struck by four interwoven leadership challenges that render any internal versus external dichotomizing of the organization nonsensical.

First, there is a level of dynamism in the global environment that many at Georg Jensen did (or do) not comprehend. Under the best of circumstances, an organization like Georg Jensen has to be nimble of foot and encouraging of dialogue and continuous learning to address the impact of rapid change, especially on matters of global branding and strategic alignment. As Eisenberg, Goodall, and Trethewey (2010) observed, the organization must “purposely sponsor and stage regular conversations about the appropriateness of the current strategy and the possible alternatives” (p. 281). Unfortunately, such simple and obvious-to-the-point-of-banal advice is easier said than done. As Eisenberg et al. note, following the advice requires companies to take a hard look at both its business strategy and internal systems—and too few do this with dialogic due diligence in mind.

Dialogue can be hindered by a romanticized discourse of leadership, which grants leaders immense influence, credit, and culpability over the direction of the organization (Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985). According to the case, Georg Jensen’s top leaders (e.g., Gord Ray, Hans Kristian Højgaard, or Ulrik Garde Due) are given the task of deciding the essence of the organization and directing it forward—presumably with visionary leadership in mind. However, this view of leadership has been criticized for being overly heroic, suggesting that leaders and leaders alone are the ones with the answers (Yukl, 1999). By contrast, management fashion theorists suggest leaders can be quite fickle as they chase new ideas and novel fashions (e.g., Abrahamson, 1996; Esposito, 2011). Thus, top management’s search for quick fixes and novel strategies can sometimes supersede whatever passes for due diligence in researching the problem, gaining diverse and contrary views, and seeking evidence-based solutions. It creates a drift away from the other stakeholders of the organization and can create what Hatch and Schultz (2001) would call a misalignment of the brand.

Second, and very much related to the above, in turbulent environments, a collaborative model is necessary to apprehend the onslaught of tensions, contradictions, and paradoxes during strategic alignment and culture change. For example, how extensively should Georg Jensen move out of its flagship silver market into diamond jewelry and other product areas? How are new branding strategies related to the strategic alignment of old branding strategies? How is the global brand also always a locally situated one? Can an organization achieve a unified diversity of branding strategies? What are the ways in which its business units could resist and appear to be changing without really changing at all (i.e., first order change)? Exploration versus exploitation, global versus local, change versus stability, and control versus resistance are just a few of the tensions Georg Jensen leaders and its other stakeholders face. Lots of data points gleaned through collaboration give leaders a greater ability to discern the complex environs in which they operate.

Consider also that these tensions may knot in ways that some leaders perceive as immobilizing while others perceive them as energizing (Sheep, Fairhurst, & Khazanchi, 2014). Tensions can get managed in problematic ways with “shades of guilt, paranoia, frustration, withdrawal or anxiety” or, by contrast, “with flexibility, negotiation, and thoughtful discretion” based on the way tensions get framed (Tracy, 2004, p. 123). So who frames these tensions? Everyone does. Managers do, of course, as they implement any kind of change—but employees also continuously frame tensions, especially as requested changes rub against established habits and practices. But there is a batting order here; management can have the first crack at such framing if they recognize the opportunities waiting in the wings of strategic planning (Fairhurst, 2011). We believe that too many leaders and managers abdicate this responsibility, creating a communication vacuum around strategic change.

Third, there is a strong hint of Danish ethnocentrism. Hans Kristian Højsgaard’s remark that Georg Jensen has an “export mentality, where one begins every day thinking of Denmark” suggests exactly that. Clearly, he—and maybe he alone at the time—understood that “internationalization starts in your head” where all culture is ultimately rooted (emphasis original). As Edgar Schein (2010) said, to learn of an organization’s culture, look beyond company artifacts and values to unconscious beliefs and assumptions about the firm’s relationship to its environment. By doing so, we can well understand how Danish ethnocentrism might have complicated the transformation of the company and the brand with a history that is now out of date. Just how much is Danish ethnocentrism a problem for Georg Jensen? Leaders have a special responsibility to pose tough and uncomfortable questions to their organizations—to hold up the looking glass even when it reflects back a less than desirable image.

Fourth, culture bites back, making leadership transitions difficult. New leaders do not enter organizations in a vacuum, but enter with a venue full of ingrained practices and settled beliefs. “Position imprints” left from former incumbents of managerial positions shape the new CEO’s room to maneuver (Burton & Beckman, 2007), often through something as simple as shared organizational stories that perpetuate the dos and don’ts of the organization (Schein, 2010). This creates implicit boundaries that inhibit a leader’s ability to act freely and break new ground. Such a scenario is evident in The Case of Georg Jensen, where the legacy of the founder and prominent past designers, and a status as a Danish national treasure, set limits for current and future managerial action. It is interesting that during his tenure as CEO of Georg Jensen, Ulrik Garde Due affectionately referred to the company as “the old lady,” a metaphor that perfectly captures a sense of immobility, fragility, and settled ways. An “old lady” often comes with a lot of baggage, baggage that can weigh her down and lead to inertia.

To break such inertia, several studies have argued that hiring an outsider can be the route to much needed strategic change (Fondas & Wiersema, 1997). But such outside recruitment comes with the challenge of socializing the new incumbent correctly into the organization (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979). Recalling our earlier point regarding tensions, becoming too absorbed in the existing ways of doing things might lead to inertia, but being too removed from the established ways might lead to alienation. Ascending the position as new CEO is thus a matter of walking a tight rope between being innovative and driving strategic change while still being respectful and sensitive to the history and culture of the organization. All present and future CEOs of Georg Jensen must learn this lesson if they are to guide the company toward the right global strategy.

As we close, we are left with more questions: Will the understated elegance of Georg Jensen designs translate into equally elegant global branding and strategic alignment for global growth? Will Georg Jensen’s leadership get caught up in discourses of leadership that are visionary, commanding, and authority-based? Or will they come to understand that, through dialogue, they sometimes must loosen the controls within the system to gain overall control of such things as global branding and strategic alignment? Will they understand the complexities and extreme turbulence of today’s global markets? Will their tension management strategies be productive ones? Only time will tell, but clearly, global leadership with established brands is not getting any easier.

Patrice M. Buzzanell: Establishing a Georg Jensen Signature Career Design

Like the visions created by artists who work with precious gems and metals, this case analysis focuses on the artistry, product, design, and imagination that unfold in career. Career can be defined both as a theme that drives individuals’ work- and non-work-related activities and as overarching structures that bring together jobs, paid and unpaid work, and occupations with short- and long-term discursive and material consequences (Buzzanell & Goldzwig, 1991; Buzzanell & Lucas, 2006). Career is protean, or shifting, as well as relational and boundaryless (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996; Hall & Associates, 1996). These thoughts and corresponding scholarship direct attention to the dynamic, ambiguous, resilient, and still seductive nature of the vision called career. To explore the possibilities of career, then, one would (a) delve into the contexts in which careers take place, and then (b) imagine the possibilities of a career development system rooted in the values, lived contradictions and ambiguities, and dreams of individuals and collectivities.

To begin, this case is fraught with desires for continuity, whispered pleasure, and deep-seated contradictions. The case exposes resistance to the staid image of a Georg Jensen rooted in its past, excitement about the potential of a high-end global Danish brand presumably true to the simplicity of Danish design, and multiple incongruities surrounding Georg Jensen’s appeal to wealthy new clientele while its Danish stores sell kitchen items and no one seems to know how to manage global branding with local appeal. On this shifting ground, organizational communication and career specialists could imagine career development system possibilities rooted in the values and dreams of individuals and collective stakeholders associated with Georg Jensen. But such career design possibilities come with more research and dialogue that Georg Jensen leadership seem to want to invest.

Like the rebranding efforts themselves, the overarching tensions of continuity-discontinuity, stability-change, local-global, mundane-luxury, unappealing-aesthetic, and pride in the past and hope for the future, would be evident in Georg Jensen career development systems. Here, career development refers not only to the identification and development of individuals’ employability and/or advancement but also to the vision of what this workforce could become—a vision that has many different aspects with opportunities to redesign as people and contexts demand.

For most new workforce members, it appears as though their entry port is through retail at store levels. The case indicates that this retail force receives on-the-spot training in items, probably in a needs-based fashion. There does not seem to be systematic training, performance appraisals, instruction in luxury items, or gem and precious metal accreditation sessions.

Furthermore, as funds were not allocated to hire a company to research, design, and implement a rebranding strategy and as the two CEOs and Gord Ray were brought into Georg Jensen in top officer and executive positions for strategic redirection, it seems safe to assume that Georg Jensen is unlikely to invest in external career development consultants and likely “promotes from within” in most cases. Case details also indicate that, historically and at present, top leadership has been European and male. If so, then career development foci would start with enriching the internal labor market to engage in rebranding and diversification efforts commensurate with those accorded to product lines.

To accomplish these goals, Georg Jensen should note that successful career development programs are those rooted in organizational culture and rewards for employee initiative. As numerous organizational communication and interdisciplinary scholars have noted, organizational culture is not a unitary entity but a fluid, beautiful process that not only gives form but also changes moment-to-moment. In constructing a viable career development program that retains design thinking, Georg Jensen would need to take into consideration the views, hopes, and competencies of their most precious resource, their employees and other stakeholders.

Bearing these points in mind, Georg Jensen’s “promotion from within” program would capitalize on the history, values, and ongoing rebranding and creative spirit that has been Georg Jensen. Aesthetics, national treasure, and care in working with and displaying artistic yet usable products lie at the core of this organizational culture and its career development design. Given emphasis on internal promotion, attention must be directed toward the training, deliberate construction of challenging assignments, and continuous improvement of, and feedback from, workers. Furthermore, with existing markets being in Europe, New York, Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and other prime locations and emerging markets in China, India, and Russia, greater diversity and inclusion of difference through capturing and using alternative logics throughout Georg Jensen would be key priorities. Customers from all parts of the world would come to these stores—training simply for a given locale would be necessary but insufficient for service and innovation.

Just as Georg Jensen prides itself on its product niche so, too, can Georg Jensen develop its own unique and top tier career development design. What would career development for “pure sensuality” with all its contradictory and pleasurable connotations in global luxury markets look like? How might such a career design be sustainable for Georg Jensen’s own workers and offered as a model for other organizations in the luxury market?

If career development incorporates sensibilities toward “purity that lives,” “Danish design,” and “purity and sensuality” motifs, then Georg Jensen’s career development program could begin with design specifications that it be an elegant and deceptively simple three-prong design. For the first prong, globalization brand, employees could capitalize on and enrich their own cultural intelligence (see Ang & Van Dyne, 2008). They would be encouraged to learn about current and emerging markets. This learning might mean that stores feature displays and culture-specific products to diversify store settings and customer–employee interactions. Successful individual and store efforts could be rewarded with trips to Georg Jensen sites around the world. They could receive bonuses in the form of jewelry or other items for outstanding performance—with the Georg Jensen jewelry also providing a means of promoting organizational identification.

A second prong in the career development design focuses on instilling sensibilities toward the many meanings and embodiments of luxury and sensuality. Employees would not simply be trained in luxury items and gem or metal accreditations but also would be treated as raw gems with unique characteristics and potential. Over time and regardless of their positions, they would be coached to be observant about and cognizant of luxury clientele’s expectations as well as mindful about their own experiences with Georg Jensen products and services. Their training would encourage learning about different functions with each successful certification adding to their employee profile. These achievements might be marked as status passages rather than promotions per se (see Arthur, Hall, & Lawrence, 1989); they also would come with responsibilities to voice their own and clients’ opinions.

As rewards to employees, for outstanding performance, they and their top clients could be invited to work with designers to create items for clients’ own organizations or philanthropic efforts and/or for personal use. These designs might be available to others in invitation-only offering. A portion of profits from such designs could be earmarked for recipients aligned with Georg Jensen’s corporate social responsibility programs.

The final prong of a Georg Jensen career design parallels the rebranding efforts to contemporize product lines and store features. Here, the efforts work toward contemporizing George Jensen’s framing of employee career processes. True to Georg Jensen’s mental map and language featuring Danish design and elegance, employment and career policies would be phrased and structured in ways that are direct, appreciative, and culturally appropriate. To contemporize the design of Georg Jensen’s career development system and routinize the sharing of details that would enhance everyone’s performance, there could be restricted social media sites where employees could relate reflections and stories about products, services, interactions with customers, observations about shifts in styles, and so on.

Given that users’ voices and interests are essential to design dynamics, Georg Jensen could encourage employees’ and customers’ use of social media to tell their product and service stories with notes of appreciation for complimentary tweets and other posts and for those that alerted organization members to potential problems. A career development program rooted in design would recognize that such ongoing dialogue enriches and changes program prototypes while also encouraging the next iteration. Employees could be encouraged to center personal career plans around simplicity, design, and elegance with regular 360° performance feedback systems and regular review and critique.

In the end, a Georg Jensen career design centered on “purity that lives” (emphasis added) could not only remain true to its core values but also engage in continuous evaluation and redesign of its own career and product branding strategies. It could become design, or architecture for an integrated career system, and as a trademark career development and design process worthy of its George Jensen signature.

Lars Thøger Christensen: Pure Self-Seduction? Toward a Critique of Georg Jensen’s Branding Assumptions

Branding involves many different disciplines, including marketing, communication, consumer behavior, organization, strategy, economics, and so on, that all need to be taken into proper consideration when planning, executing, and evaluating a branding project. Seen from a communication perspective, the most pertinent issue in this interesting case is the set of marketing and branding assumptions that Georg Jensen managers bring to bear in their attempts to revitalize or “contemporize” the Georg Jensen brand. These assumptions are epitomized by the statement that “. . . communicating a uniform brand message at the store level across the world was crucial for the whole strategy.” The implications and limitations of this perspective is the heart of the following analysis.

With its focus on uniformity, clarity, and consistency in all branding messages—especially those that emanate from the company’s retailing environment—the purity strategy of Georg Jensen taps directly into the dominant discourse on branding, represented, for example, by mainstream literature on integrated communications (e.g., Balmer & Greyser, 2003; Schultz & Kitchen, 2000), corporate design (Olins, 1989), or corporate branding (de Chernatony, 1999; Hatch & Schultz, 2001; Ind, 1998). According to this literature, all dimensions of an organization’s existence—such as advertising, design, buildings, uniforms, culture(s), and behaviors—hold powerful messages to consumers and other organizational audiences and need, as a consequence, to be integrated and controlled by the overall corporate message. The primary focus of contemporary branding philosophy is to avoid inconsistencies and “gaps” in corporate messages (for a critique of this view, see Christensen, Morsing, & Cheney, 2008; Christensen, Torp, & Firat, 2005).

Given the growing competition for attention, differentiation, and legitimacy in today’s business environment, it is not surprising that organizations of all sorts are increasingly preoccupied with their appearance and often invest huge sums in articulating, expressing, and celebrating their identities. The market seems to be demanding well-crafted brands that are able to stand out and break through the clutter. In adapting to such conditions, it makes perfect sense that Georg Jensen’s new Global Marketing Director Gord Ray was looking for “a common thread” across the company’s products and communications. And, the subsequent process of streamlining the Georg Jensen brand through a more distinctive positioning, a clearly defined brand architecture, and an integrative communication strategy is fully in line with dominant branding philosophy as it is being taught at most contemporary business schools. Instead of communicating different things to different audiences and across different media and thus sub-optimizing communication budgets, the idea behind integrated marketing communications is to improve communication impact through an alignment of all messages, symbols, behaviors, and other aspects. Thus, the basic ideas behind Georg Jensen’s new branding strategy, as conceived by its CEO Hans Kristian Højgaard, seemed both logical and sound when viewed in light of increased competition for customers and attention.

The implementation of the branding strategy, however, had several theoretical as well as practical limitations. First, the assumption behind this approach to branding and integrated communications seems to be that a proper conception and execution of the “brand essence” (in this case, “purity that lives”) automatically unfolds into an equivalent brand image among consumers and other relevant audiences. Messages sent, according to this view, are unpacked as intended and are therefore equal to messages received (Christensen & Cornelissen, 2011). Such a linear and sender-oriented perspective on communication ignores the fact that consumers are not passive targets but mature, creative, and savvy partners in the co-production of brand identities (Christensen, Cornelissen, & Firat, 2009). Consumers, thus, often use corporate products and messages differently from their original purpose, reshape and adapt them to personal use, and modify and sometimes pervert their meanings in ways not imagined by their creators (Cova, 1996). Uniformity, consistency, and precision in corporate branding efforts, thus, do not simply transform into uniformity, consistency, and precision in consumer experiences. Check, for example, the Internet to see how BP’s rebranding campaign “Beyond Petroleum” is being twisted by different audiences. The fact that some Georg Jensen customers regarded the new retail design as “cold and not very inviting” rather than “understated” and “sensual” illustrates this problem with acute clarity: Design and other dimensions of branding are symbolically open and thus open to multiple interpretations.

In spite of this well-known limitation, major brands are eager to ensure that brand signifiers are presented identically across different locations. Luxury brands, in particular, operate from the assumption that global awareness and recognition hinge on such uniformity (Olins, 1989). Although customers of luxury brands may be interested in recognizing the style and design of the brand in the different cities they visit, they hardly compare and evaluate different retail outlets with the same attention to detail as do the brand owners (Davidson, 1998). The assumption of customer interest and involvement in these details is vastly exaggerated and indicates that brand management is a highly self-absorbed enterprise. Corporate self-absorption is manifested, for example, as vanity with respect to the signifiers that organizations chose to manufacture and as a constant preoccupation with ritualistic expressions and repetitions of the brand—a preoccupation that borders on self-seduction (Christensen & Cheney, 2000).

In his plan to renovate Georg Jensen’s 115 retail outlets according to one common vision of the brand, CEO Hans Kristian Højgaard downplayed the fact that customers receive such efforts differently across the globe and across different age groups and social strata. As such, he embarked on a voluminous project that had more in common with corporate vanity and a desire for corporate self-recognition than with market adaptation. As logical and inevitable this strategy may have seemed to begin with, it blinded Georg Jensen to other important possibilities that could and should have complemented the overall brand strategy. While the costs of the store renovation plan limited the resources for other marketing efforts, the aesthetic wow-experience sought in the store and seen as “absolutely vital in establishing the luxury brand” pushed Georg Jensen away from fully acknowledging and catering to different audiences and consumers. In its attempt to stand out as a distinctive luxury brand, Georg Jensen forgot that its products—in spite of some common “Georg Jensen style”—are quite diverse and appeal to many different audiences. The impatience with and lack of attention to the less-than-wealthy customers who browse for inexpensive Georg Jensen items, indicate that the new branding strategy had become a source of inflexibility and systematic ignorance. Even major luxury brands need to generate traffic in their stores and many of the less expensive products are important means to that end.

Rather than a monolithic branding strategy (Olins, 1989) that assumes—unrealistically—full brand consistency and excludes variation and market responsiveness, for example, proper attention to inexpensive cash-cow products like the decorational lines, the challenge to Georg Jensen is to develop a dual strategy that allows, on one hand, the company to retain and fully exploit the variety of its product portfolio while, on the other hand, experimenting with the luxury dimension of the brand, for example, in a few flagship stores. Organizational adaptability and responsiveness to multiple trends in the market requires a more flexible approach to branding that balance the need to secure clarity and consistency in the overall brand message with diversity and variety in its execution (Christensen, Firat, & Torp, 2008). Without such balance, the brand—and the organization behind—becomes unnecessarily vulnerable to new trends and tendencies.