Correspondence: Mats Urde, Lund University, School of Economics and Management Department of Business Administration P.O. Box 7080, SE-220 07 Lund Sweden. Tel: +46 (0) 42 343444; E-mail: mats.urde@brandorientation.se

¹is assistant professor and Head of the Brand Management Research Programme at Lund University, Sweden. His published work has appeared in leading journals such as European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management and in the Journal of Brand Management on 'Monarchies as Corporate Brands' (with Balmer and Greyser, 2006). He is the author of Brandorientation (1997) on corporate branding and corporate values foundations with a focus on core value-based brand building. He has served as an advisor on brands strategy and corporate brand management to Volvo, Ericsson, Akzo Nobel and The Swedish National Symphony Orchestra among others. He has been a member of the Electrolux Brand Award jury for eight years.

²is the Richard P. Chapman Professor (Marketing/Communications) Emeritus at Harvard Business School, where he specialises in brand marketing, advertising/corporate communications and sports management. He is former Editorial Board Chairman of the Harvard Business Review. For eight years, he was also Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute. He is responsible for 16 books and many articles, and over 300 published case studies. Recently, he co-authored Revealing the Corporation (Routledge, 2003) and several publications on Monarchies as corporate brands. He also wrote 'Insights into Brand Crises' (2007).

³is Professor of Corporate Marketing at Brunel University in London, and formerly Professor of Corporate Brand/Identity Management at Bradford. His published work has appeared in leading journals such as California Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Long Range Planning, The British Journal of Management and European Journal of Marketing. He is co-author (with Stephen A. Greyser) of Revealing the Corporation (Routledge, 2003) on corporate identity, image, reputation and corporate branding, an article on corporate marketing, European Journal of Marketing (2006), and 'The Crown as a corporate brand: Insights from Monarchies' (with Greyser and Urde) Journal of Brand Management (2006). He is the founder-director of the International Corporate Identity Group (1994), launched at the House of Lords in 1995. He has served as an advisor on corporate brand/identity management for the BBC, the WPP Group and Mercedes Benz among others.

Received 29 May 2007; Published online 27 July 2007.

Abstract

This paper articulates a concept of 'heritage brands', based primarily on field case research and studies of practice. We define brand heritage as a dimension of a brand's identity found in its track record, longevity, core values, use of symbols and particularly in an organisational belief that its history is important. A heritage brand is one with a positioning and value proposition based on its heritage. The work grew from our lengthy study of monarchies as corporate brands. We describe how to identify the heritage that may reside in a brand and how to nurture, maintain and protect it, particularly through the management mindset of brand stewardship to generate stronger corporate marketing.