Entering a complex market: How hybrid branding helps new brands create distinctive and resonant identities

Abstract

In today’s competitive markets, creating a distinctive brand identity is crucial yet challenging, especially for new entrants. Complex markets with conflicting institutional logics offer unique opportunities to create a distinctive and resonant brand identity. We introduce hybrid branding as a novel strategy that resolves market-level cultural contradictions to create such identities. Our qualitative analysis of lingerie brand Savage X Fenty identifies four mechanisms of hybrid branding—selective adopting, selective distancing, juxtaposing, and integrating—through which the brand resolved contradictions between the conflicting ‘bombshell’ and ‘body-positive’ logics structuring the lingerie market to create an identity centered on inclusive sexual empowerment. We also identify threats that hybrid brands face: perceived deviations from logics, amplification of contradictions, and hybridization failures. We contribute to theory by introducing hybrid branding as a means of navigating institutional complexity and by identifying market complexity as a source of novel meaning creation. We also offer insights on managing brand authenticity, legitimacy, and hybrid brands.