Morning!

It’s 10:41 PM, I’ve just got in from dinner, and this newsletter is not finished. Thankfully, I tapped some keys before I left, so I just need to put the finishing touches to it.

A few more keys to tap and then bed for me. But hopefully by the time you’re reading this, it’s not only finished, but makes for a great read.

I hope you enjoy!

In September 1963, at the Frankfurt International Motor Show, a small German car company pulled the dust sheet off a new model called the 901.

The car was designed by a 28-year-old called Ferdinand Porsche, the grandson of the company's founder. It had spent four years in development. It was priced at $5,500 in 1964 money (roughly $42,000 today). And within months of launch, Peugeot forced Porsche to change its name because of an obscure French trademark on three-digit numbers with a zero in the middle.

So Porsche stuck a "1" over the "0" and the car became the 911.

And the rest is history.

Today, 62 years later, Porsche has sold over 1.2 million 911s. It has become the most famous sports car on the planet. It has won at Le Mans, Daytona, and the Targa Florio. It has appeared in more films than any other car in history.

But that’s not even the interesting bit.

The interesting part is that the 911 only makes up around 12% of Porsche's global sales. The company sells four times as many Cayennes (a model most people have never even heard of). In America last year, 62% of every Porsche sold was an SUV. Not a sports car.

By any commercial measure, Porsche should be calling itself an SUV company.

But if I asked you to picture a Porsche right now, you wouldn't picture a Cayenne. You'd picture a 911.

That single car has carried the entire identity of the brand for six decades, even as the actual business behind it moved on to selling family cars. Take away the 911, and Porsche becomes just another premium SUV maker fighting Audi and BMW for the school-run market. Keep the 911, and Porsche remains Porsche.

This is what I like to call ‘A Hero Product’.

Now, once you notice this pattern in Porsche, you start seeing it everywhere.

Look at Rolex. When a normal person imagines a Rolex watch, they instantly think of the Submariner model (sometimes without even knowing what it’s called).

Yet it’s actually the Rolex Datejust that is Rolex's bestselling watch.

People see Sean Connery in his Submariner as James Bond or Keanu Reeves rocking one on the red carpet. They see it and don’t think “I want a Submariner”, they think “I want a Rolex”. And just like the people who walk out of the Porsche store with a Cayenne - they’ve been roped in by the hero product and sold another model.

One of the most obvious examples of this in the fashion world is Hermès.

As a man who has never purchased a handbag in his life, I have close to 0 knowledge of which brands make good handbags or what popular handbags are called. Yet there is one bag I do know the name of a… The Birkin.

In 1984, off the back of a chance conversation between Jane Birkin and their CEO on a Paris to London flight, they launched a leather bag called the Birkin. Priced at $2,000. Barely marketed. Today, an original Birkin just sold at Sotheby's for $10 million.

Between 1984 and 2015, the bag returned an average of 14.2% a year, outperforming both gold and the S&P 500. But the trick is this. Almost no Hermès customer will ever own a Birkin. Most will never even see one in a store. The Birkin exists to create the mythology that makes every other Hermès product feel special. When someone walks out with a £400 scarf, they aren't buying a scarf. They're buying entry into the world the Birkin built.

Again, a hero product that sells the rest of the line.

So if it seems that nearly every major brand has a ‘Hero Product”, why is that? And why are they so important?

Well the hero product does two jobs…

Job 1: It defines what the brand means.

Porsche is the 911. Rolex is the Submariner. Hermès is the Birkin. Apple is the iPhone. Ask a customer to describe any of these companies and they'll describe the hero product first, because that's the mental image the brand has spent decades planting.

It’s a packed up representation of who this brands sees themself as - and that’s why these brands market their hero products so much.

Porsche wants to be seen as a sports car brand, with sleek, fast cars that also have heritage. That is the 911. That’s what it represents and that image is what customers view the brand as.

Job 2: It sells the catalogue (without much effort)

Someone buying a Cayenne isn't really shopping for an SUV. They're shopping for a Porsche. It’s the simple thing that separates the Cayenne from every other SUV on the market. Why not get a Volvo? Or a Mazda? Well, because that would never be as cool as buying a Porsche. And a Porsche is cool because? Because it’s represented by the 911. Every product that sits alongside the hero is quietly borrowing meaning from it.

This is the bit most modern brands miss.

Most companies launch dozens of products in the hope that one of them might become iconic. That's the wrong way round. The brands that win pick one product, commit to it for decades, and let it become the hero product for everything that follows.

Think Athletic Greens with AG1. Or Ridge Wallet with their Wallet. Or Yeti with their cool boxes.

Every one of these hero products was intentional.

And each of them now carries the rest of the catalogue.

Right, that’s all I’ve got for you. Time for bed!

Until next Sunday,

— Niall

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