Inventing a past: Corporate heritage as dialectical relationships of past and present

Linear and dialectical conceptions of past and present

The corporate heritage literature has made an important contribution in moving our understanding of the past, present, and future beyond a simple, linear relationship. As such, corporate heritage connects the past, present, and future: what Balmer (2013) calls omni temporality. Balmer and Burghausen (2015) point out that the past has traditionally been treated as a contingency to marketing and business phenomena, enabling and constraining the future (Kimberly and Bouchikhi, 1995). This notion is also mirrored in parts of the corporate heritage literature. For instance, Blombäck and Brunninge (2009) propose that preoccupation with heritage may lock companies into inertial identities, as the past tends to be extended into the future. However, representations of the past in themselves are products of identity construction (Moingeon and Ramanantsoa, 1997) and historical references are shaped with their strategic utility in mind (Blombäck and Brunninge, 2013, 2016). The past, therefore, becomes a constitutive element of corporate-level marketing phenomena rather than just a contingency (Balmer, 2011; Balmer and Burghausen, 2015). In his notion of relative invariance, Balmer (2011) noted the value of authenticating the constancy of corporate heritage traits over time and the need for an organization’s heritage traits to remain relevant. Sometimes, for instance, the meanings associated with heritage symbols (such as those linked to monarchy) can acquire new meanings and relevance over time (Balmer, 2011). Interpretations of the past influence how we understand the present and what we expect from the future (Brunninge, 2009). However, this relationship also works in the reverse direction, as visions of the future and present needs to decide what aspects of the past are considered relevant and how they are to be interpreted (Balmer, 2011; Burghausen and Balmer, 2014). To repeat, heritage institutions are characterized by an omnipresence of time (Balmer, 2011), transcending past, present, and future (Burghausen and Balmer, 2014). This omni-/transtemporal perspective (Balmer, 2011, 2013; Burghausen and Balmer, 2014) is distinctive in linking the three temporal domains of the past, present, and future in meaningful and relevant ways in the present.

The corporate heritage literature acknowledges the ambiguous nature of the ontological and epistemological nature of the past (Balmer, 2013; Burghausen and Balmer, 2014). As the past can be invented (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1992), heritage can be reinterpreted, idealized, or invented in order to fit contemporary concerns (Hudson and Balmer, 2013; Brunninge and Fridriksson, 2017; Burghausen and Balmer, 2014). In this commentary, we highlight the phenomenon of invented corporate heritage, that is, instances where organizations claim and communicate (in whole or in part) a corporate heritage which is fictitious. In doing so, we build on the previous conceptual work of Hudson and Balmer’s (2013) apropos “faux heritage”, Hudson and Balmer’s (2013) work on authenticity of corporate heritage and the identities of time, and Balmer and colleagues’ taxonomies and repertoires of the past (Balmer, 2011, 2013; Burghausen and Balmer, 2014) and the potential symbolic relevance of fictional corporate pasts. In particular, we refer to the perceived authenticity of corporate heritage claims vis-à-vis consumers. Invented pasts represent cases where the dialectical relationship of the past, present, and future is pushed to an extreme.

Empirical examples of invented pasts are more common than one might expect. Harquail (2007) reports the case of a US food brand, communicating the story of an invented founder to reinforce the authenticity of the brand. Twin City, a Swedish restaurant, located in the provincial town of Jönköping/Huskvarna, communicates a made-up founding story. The restaurant was supposedly founded by identical twins who started up a global chain, strategically locating restaurants in twin cities (from Detroit/Minneapolis to Tokyo/Yokohama) around the world. Although the story is a pure invention, it is communicated in menus, on the corporate website, and through storytelling in the restaurant. There is even a market for pasts. By acquiring an inactive company, a firm can appropriate a suitable heritage (cf. Balmer, 2013) it lacks any substantial connection with. For instance, a start-up gold trading house in Germany, acquired the no longer used name of a 168-year-old heritage brand in the gold business, Degussa, evoking the impression of being part of more than a century of industry tradition. In a lawsuit, the company was convicted of misleading marketing and had to modify its use of the heritage brand (Stocker, 2014).

Invented heritage: Authenticity and myth

Why do companies sometimes construct an invented corporate heritage based on non-existing or far-fetched links to the past? Why do they even invent past events that have never occurred, events that in the worst case might be interpreted as “fake” or “lies” by stakeholders and lead to a case in court? Hobsbawm and Ranger (1992) have elaborated on invented traditions that are created to support the construction of identities. Similarly, we know that consumers use brands and symbols as “symbolic selves” (Holt, 2004: 8) to achieve desired identities (Hudson and Balmer, 2013). So, on the surface, it seems that an invented past can mask a corporation’s present identity problems.

On a deeper level, however, an invented corporate heritage ironically serves to construct an aura of authenticity (Alexander, 2009). Authenticity, or the “true,” “genuine,” and “real deal,” has become a key tenet of marketing and branding and is specifically linked to a brand’s history and tradition. It is also central to corporate heritage brands (Balmer, 2011, 2013). While consumers and marketers alike look for authenticity (Beverland, 2005, 2009; Brown et al., 2003; Goulding, 2000; Grayson and Martinec, 2004), authenticity can never be simply proclaimed. Instead, it is construed by the creation of an aura of authenticity.

As Hudson and Balmer (2013) point out, corporate heritage can be mythical in the sense of referring to a glorious past that is romanticized and partly fictitious. Nevertheless, such mythical heritage can have an aura of authenticity, when consumers subjectively perceive it as genuine. The past plays a key role in the creation of such an aura, as it offers rich symbolic resources that provide clues about the “genuineness” of a brand’s or firm’s existence, its values, and promise (Beverland, 2009). Hartmann and Ostberg (2013) call these brand ontology, brand axiology, and brand epistemology. By representing the trajectory of a brand—where it comes from and where it is now in terms of its own past—corporate heritage offers rich material for marketers to create and communicate a corporate story that informs the market about the nature of the brand (brand ontology), its values (brand axiology), and its promise (brand epistemology). A long-standing and consistent past of these is informative about the ‘genuineness’ or authenticity of the brand, that is, it offers the material from which it can be judged if corporations are “the real deal” and “true to themselves.”

From the basis, corporate brand continuity can be constructed by appropriating long-existing symbols (as in the example of Degussa) that match a desired brand ontology, axiology, and epistemology of the current present business, thereby aiming at constructing brand authenticity and giving credibility to the company’s present operations. Connections to the past, even if they may appear far-fetched at closer investigation, conjure up an impression of continuity—accordingly, the brand must be the “real deal” or authentic. A key dimension of corporate heritage is about merging the time frames of the past, present, and prospective future (Balmer, 2013). In doing so, the past shows the track record of the corporation, giving credibility to the promise that it will deliver value to its customers in the future as it has done in the past. Heritage presupposes trait constancy (Balmer, 2013).

In cases where the past of a corporation, for example, its founding story, is invented, another crucial mechanism of authenticity construction is exposed. Since authenticity cannot be claimed, brands turn to other ways through which authenticity can be infused. Previous research highlights how marketers attempt to construct authenticity by rendering the ordinary special (Hartmann and Ostberg, 2013), which is conceptually known as enchantment or moments of magic, myth, and wonder (Ritzer, 2005). Thus, a corporate past that is somewhat exciting and special can infer authenticity to the corporation. Therefore, past and tradition are important dimensions of authenticity which are particularly appreciated by marketers and consumers, as it is this heritage that is capable of delivering desired enchanting experiences by transporting consumers into a romantic and mythical past. While the case of invented corporate heritage is a somewhat extreme case, it instantiates the past–present dialectic in which all corporations operate as corporate heritage exists at the intersection of the past and present. Following Stern (1995: 165), myths have an important role in explaining “the nature of the world and the rationale for social conduct in a given culture.” While conveying romanticized versions of the past (Hudson and Balmer, 2013), corporate myths are important vessels to bring about a corporate brand’s ontology, epistemology, and axiology.

From this perspective, then, we are not surprised that while some organizations have a bonafide corporate heritage, other institutions have, in effect, an invented corporate heritage. As such, they have not only manipulated the way they communicate their organization’s past but, in effect, have contrived the present and future preceding the past, and in the case of invented corporate heritage, heritage is constructed entirely in the present. Being mindful of this phenomenon can help the corporate heritage literature to even better understand the potential of constructing authenticity based on accounts of the past, no matter if these are far-fetched or even invented.