I pledge allegiance to this company - includes interview with Ferrari North America Pres. and CEO Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni - ways of developing consumer allegiance

Chief Executive, The, Sept, 1999 by Michael C. Ruettgers

To what degree do companies tell consumers what to dream?

You cannot just have a fantastic advertising message and create a dream because today customers are much too knowledgeable for that. It takes seven steps, the first of which is to interpret the dreams of your time. Today there are three leading dreams. The first is for social recognition. We are social animals and we want to be recognized by our peers. The second dream is freedom, to exceed our physical limits. And the third is a dream of heroes.

Those dreams have always been with us, but the motivations change constantly. At the beginning of the century, the dream of freedom was represented by the need to buy a car. Twenty years ago, it was the success of the Walkman. More recently, it's the cell phone. So the company can interpret the dreams, but those dreams are made by the cultural environment.

That's why it's important for companies to start to adopt a much wider approach to business. They have to behave like artists, by constantly listening to the environment, being connected to the industry they're in. The second step is to make sure the dream is connected to a product with high emotional content. It's important to make it beautiful - new lines, new designs, new colors. Make it sensual, so people can relate to it. Sell products that have that emotional content.

So you're selling an experience.

Exactly. If you drive a Ferrari in bumper-to-bumper city traffic, it becomes a nightmare, so we have to create an environment around the product so that people can enjoy it and can really understand what the product stands for. At the end of the '80s a lot of people were buying Ferraris for social recognition. But the company stuck to what it did best - making the fastest cars on earth for the dream of freedom, and then teaching its customers, organizing track events where people could drive their cars in safe environments. And the reason we continue to be successful is we always stick to that dream of freedom.

Can any company do this?

You have to decide whether your product is a commodity or a potential dream product. Customers are not willing to invest emotionally in commodities. But for example, Nike has transformed what was before considered a commodity - a pair of sneakers - into a dream product. Or in the automotive industry, what Volkswagen has done by relaunching the new Beetle. That car was able to connect with customers' emotions with a new design, new colors, new interiors, new presentations. And while the majority of cars are sold today like commodities because they are sold sheerly on low prices, VW was able to sell their cars at full sticker because it was able to connect with its customers.

Today, it seems dreams are changing at a much faster pace.

Selling dreams is like being an artist; you have to constantly renew yourself. You cannot say, I sold a dream and now that's it. You have to be extremely creative. That's why, for example the fifth step is finding a creator, somebody who has the creativity and vision, who is able to constantly renew the company while preserving an aesthetic direction.