The gap between what a product does and what it means -- a story powerful enough that people pay for the meaning, not just the function.
Tensions
Ferrari shows that mass awareness and ultra-exclusivity can reinforce each other: 400 million F1 fans make the scarcity meaningful rather than obscure. But brand licensing nearly destroyed the same asset by extracting short-term margin from long-term meaning. The question: can a brand survive being both widely known and narrowly owned, or does every extension eventually collapse the gap that created the value?