About

Analyses that reconstruct, case by case, the mechanics by which brands, institutions, and public figures convert one form of capital into another. Fame can be converted into authority, a title into a mandate, exposure into legitimacy, or legitimacy into the power to rank others.

Here, brand does not refer only to a company. We use the word in its broadest sense: a brand is any entity whose name produces effects in the world. A company, a creator, an executive, an institution, or a state becomes a brand the moment its name concentrates a form of value that allows it to act upon others.

Public figures, consumer markets, strategic industries, geopolitical brands: the publication's four sections examine the same object at different scales. They all pursue a single question: What is a name worth, how is its value built, how does it circulate, and under what conditions can it be destroyed?

Every article defends a falsifiable thesis.

That thesis identifies a conversion mechanism — what we call a converter — and tests it against a case worked through to the end of its logic. When a case involves several converters, the article establishes which one governs and subordinates the others.

The role of an article is not to hand out commendations. Our anatomies may conclude that a strategy succeeded, failed, or produced contradictory effects, but it is entirely acceptable for the conclusion to be that, as things stand, no verdict is yet possible. For us, the conclusion does not precede the analysis; it emerges from the demonstration, when the demonstration allows one to be drawn.

What every article does seek to establish is the same thing: through what sequence of decisions did the observed effect occur, and under what conditions would that same sequence stop producing it.

Rankings, league tables, and "best practices" appear here only as objects of analysis. Who ranks? By what criteria? To whose benefit? These questions interest us more than the rankings themselves.

We favor description over commentary. Mechanisms are characterized when they can be — as effective, costly, cynical, robust, or fragile — but these characterizations proceed from the demonstration; they do not replace it. The Method section sets out the principles that govern how each analysis is built, verified, and published.

TAOB is written for practitioners and analysts for whom a campaign is not explained by being called "successful," nor a public statement by being judged skillful. The reader of The Anatomy of Brands is a professional for whom an analysis is complete only once the mechanism, the sequence of decisions, and the conditions under which they produce their effects have been established.

Articles are published in French and in English.