When we set out cool-hunting for this series little did we know we would be staring at myth-breaking stuff with such regularity. From rejecting brands to operating at either end of the price segment, consumers in the age bracket of 14-34 years have displayed surprising behaviour.

This week we mined our earlier survey on what makes a brand relevant to people in this age group, and came up with more insights. The first survey had shown that ‘transparency' was the most significant factor. Deeper analytics – and aided responses - threw up ‘iconic stature' (expressions such as ‘cult status', ‘prestige', ‘top-end', ‘most admired') as another significant factor.

Brands with iconic stature have a distinct halo around them and most cool folks nurture aspirations to own or experience these brands in their lifetime. Any marketer worth her salt and soap will vouch for the presence of such brands in the ‘active consideration sets' of most prospects within the target group. These brands rekindle aspirations, leading to a high ‘intent to own' among their worshippers.

However, why is it that all this does not necessarily lead to conversion or sales? This time we went about cool-hunting on this rather odd behaviour. We cool-hunted across the four metros. We then filtered the research to consider only those respondents who had easy affordability or even stretched affordability (could expand the purse through hire-purchase or lease or taking a short-term loan or take an advance or borrow) to actually own such brands.

We asked the 221 respondents who came through our filter to name three affordable iconic brands. Brands such as Mercedes, Rolex, Harley, Ananda Spa, Apple, Louis Vuitton and Salvatore Ferragamo were among those named. Then we checked if they owned any one of these, only to discover that just 27 per cent actually owned the brands that they considered iconic.

This was pretty weird. Here was a set of people who worshipped a brand, could afford it, and yet did not buy it, settling for an alternative. So, were they happy with their second choice? Again, we were astonished by the responses.

As high as almost two-thirds of the respondents who settled for an alternative, less-priced brand were ‘content' with the choices they made. And yet almost all of them said they still nurtured the dream of acquiring a product (or experience the brand) they truly worshipped sometime in the future.

This is where perhaps the conscious mind forces a customer to be prudent, therefore, there are no immediate purchases. Instead responses range from ‘not now' or ‘yes, but may be a little later' or ‘right now I will settle for something else'.

And wait! Digest this: Our psychologist on board does not classify this as ‘procrastination'. Perhaps there is something more that an ‘iconic' brand needs to do to convert the high ‘intent to own' to actual numbers. Dhananjay Chaturvedi, Managing Director of the Indian subsidiary of luxury appliance brand Miele, endorses this view. “These iconic brands need to do a little bit more to gain ‘converts' from among these worshippers,” he says.

It is going to be interesting to get to find out what the ‘little bit more' encompasses. Stay tuned for more.

(Giraj Sharma is an independent brand consultant who’s also a compulsive cool-hunter.)

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