"Historically our approach, from Michael Jackson in the '80s through Britney Spears in 2001, was really an approach of borrowed equity," Mr. Cooper said.
"[Gap] has lost any sense of who or what they are," says Passikoff, who believes the collaboration with Colette isn't a loyalty driver because it's essentially borrowed equity.
If her choices are relatively equal, she will choose based on positive borrowed equity.
Negative gearing appears to favor wealthier property owners who can buy more property based upon borrowed equity to purchase more properties even if the property is not profitable.
Still, celebrities can make really public mistakes, and good marketers make corporate partners aware of the inherent dangers of borrowed equity (using the popularity of a person or entity to sell more of another product or service).
On top of this, hundreds of local enterprises will "borrow Olympic equity" to upgrade perceptions of their own products via Olympic-themed events, sponsorships, and PR.
This fact is especially scary given that equity values may be inflated by as much as 20 to 30percentt as a result of the housing bubble, and that the nation's demographics (with the baby boomers approaching retirement) suggest that many homeowners should have largely paid off their mortgages" but instead have borrowed their equity through home equity loans.
Mr. Fenster lauded the Bing spot as an example of "borrowing the equity of a show even though they're not using its characters or setting".
Obtaining a reverse mortgage through traditional sources like the Federal Housing Administration's Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program can be costly, even with new lower fee options, and it can have other drawbacks, such as limits on how much can be borrowed against equity.
"It's a nice strategy for borrowing some equity" from the better-known i-brands, said Michael Cucka, a partner at Group 1066, a consulting company in New York specializing in corporate identity and branding.
