In a period of crisis and uncertainty as the current, heritage marketing is a suitable
strategic opportunity because it associates values and meanings to products and
services by using corporate heritage or brand heritage in order to communicate
identity, continuity and stability. Heritage marketing seems particularly appropriate
for high symbolic fashion brand that require the ability to transmit identity and to
generate symbolic meanings. In relation to high symbolic fashion brand, an
opportunity for heritage marketing strategies is to narrate the myths associated with
the brand. In fact, literature has highlighted that fashion brand can be associate to the
concept of myth thanks to the presence of symbolic values and meanings. Heritage
and myth are concepts linked to time and progression. Therefore, they should
continually innovate and evolve in relation to the community of reference in order to
find a balance between continuity and renewal. However, a risk of heritage marketing
strategies is to merely celebrating the past thus losing the ability to generate and
regenerate myths and symbolic values. This paper aims to provide a critical
contribution to heritage marketing literature highlighting the risk of obsessive fixation
in the celebration of the past. In order to avoid this risk, the paper proposes that a
possible solution might be the integration of mythopoesis which is the ability to
generate and regenerate myths in order to create and perpetuate sense and meaning
through narrative.

• Cristiano Ciappei(University of Florence)
• Andrea Boccardi(University of Florence)
• Lamberto Zollo(University of Florence)