Why Facebook Is A Threat To Lifestyle Brands
By Alexander Chernev
Polo, Gucci, Swatch, Dove, Gillette—all have become successful lifestyle brands. They play an important role in our lives by allowing us to express our values and define ourselvesto the world. At first glance, it seems the emergence of Facebook as a platform for social networking can only enhance the ability of these brands to create value for their customers. Indeed, social networking deepens brands’ connection with consumers by enabling brand loyalists to communicate directly with one another as well as with the company.
This, however, is only one side of the coin. The other side is that social interactions such as those enabled by Facebook also can have the opposite effect, weakening lifestyle brands and decreasing brand equity. The reason lies in the very essence of lifestyle brands.
Lifestyle branding appeals to managers because it offers what appears to be a relatively easy way to sidestep competition and connect with customers on a more personal level. The problem with this line of reasoning, however, is that consumers’ need for self-expression is not without limits and, like any other need, can be satiated. This means that lifestyle brands do not evade the competition; instead they end up competing for a share of a consumer’s identity. And as an increasing number of brands turn to lifestyle positioning, the competition among self-expressive brands intensifies. As a result, the competitive advantage a brand might have gained by pioneering a presence on Facebook is likely to fade away as the majority of lifestyle brands follow this lead and establish their presence on Facebook as well.
But Facebook can have even farther reaching consequences for lifestyle brands. Our need for self-expression is a fundamental human need that can be satiated by various means, not only by company-created brands. We express ourselves through our hobbies, by listening to our favorite music, cheering for our home teams, going to our favorite restaurants and clubs, and socializing with family and friends. Befriending personally relevant social groups and sharing our “likes” and preferences on Facebook allow us to further assert ourselves, ultimately decreasing our reliance on lifestyle brands to express our identities. And the more opportunities we have to express ourselves through social networks, the less likely we are to rely on lifestyle brands. Thus, by providing a platform for self-expression, Facebook can inadvertently make lifestyle brands less relevant.
This, of course, does not mean that Facebook is a threat to all lifestyle brands; there clearly will be winners and losers. Nevertheless, because our need for self-expression has boundaries and can be satiated via our social interactions, Facebook will make achieving a successful lifestyle positioning a whole lot more challenging.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/08/11/why-facebook-is-a-threat-to-lifestyle-brands/
(mine has 12,500+ users). I thought they'd contact me to ask me to remove mine after they created their official page, but thankfully they didn't. I guess it's way more interesting for them in term of exposure to let me do my thing with my unofficial page than lose all these "fans". 
