MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprise
Brand Management in the Digital Age
Brands are ubiquitous to modern society. The logics of branding shape how we view nearly every aspect of social life and, oftentimes, how we view ourselves. But the practices of brand management—of creating, shaping, maintaining, and contesting brand meaning—have transformed dramatically in recent decades. Technological changes have “opened up” the processes of branding and shifted the distribution of communicative power within consumer culture. At the same time, brands have become more “personal,” taking on public personalities and more explicit stances on issues of identity and justice. This course provides an overview of how these changes have altered the practices of brand management, bringing together both critical and administrative perspectives on contemporary branding. The ultimate aim is to provide students with a practical understanding of how brand management works, while also providing them with the conceptual tools to critique those practices.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, you will:
Develop a consumer-focused understanding of the value of brands;
Identify important issues related to the social, cultural, and political significance of brands;
Learn how to interpret brand meaning, to understand the processes by which that meaning is constructed, and to identify the actors engaged in that meaning construction; and
Apply course concepts to the analysis of contemporary brands.
Required Readings
All course texts will be provided for you on Canvas. It is expected that you will come to each course meeting having thoroughly read the assigned reading and that you are ready with comments and questions to contribute to our group discussions.
Assignments
In-Class Activities (10 x 25 pts. / 25%)
In order to sharpen both your analytical and your practical skills, we will have in-class activities most class meetings. You should come to every meeting prepared to engage in these activities and to be kind, compassionate, and encouraging colleagues who provide honest and helpful feedback to one another.
Brand Audit (750 pts. / 75%)
Over the course of the quarter, you will work in small teams (three to five members) to conduct an audit of a contemporary brand of your own choosing (with my approval). This brand can be mostly anything, but try to stay away from giant brands like Google, Coca Cola, Chanel, Urban Outfitters, Nike, Dove, etc. The most interesting projects will focus on smaller or more mid-sized brands you could do some truly original analysis of. Early on in the course, I will provide more direct guidelines on what the brand audit should look like, but you will be graded in two parts. The first part, worth 500 points, is the written brand audit due during exam week. The second part, worth the remaining 250, is a professional group presentation of your audit during the final week of classes.
Course Schedule
Week 1: Brands and their Managers
Stern, Barbara B. 2006. “What Does Brand Mean? Historical-analysis Method and Construct Definition.” Journal of Academy of Marketing Science 43 (2): 216–23.
Arvidsson, Adam. 2005. “Brands: A Critical Perspective.” Journal of Consumer Culture 5 (2): 235–58.
Schroeder, Jonathan E. 2009. “The Cultural Codes of Branding.” Marketing Theory 9 (1): 123–26.
Smith, Gareth, and Alan French. 2009. “The Political Brand: A Consumer Perspective.” Marketing Theory 9 (2): 209–26..
Week 2: Graphic Design and the Visuals of Branding
Phillips, Barbara J., Edward F. McQuarrie, and W. Glenn Griffin. 2014. “The Face of the Brand: How Art Directors Understand Visual Brand Identity.” Journal of Advertising 43 (4): 318–32.
Billard, Thomas J. 2016. “Fonts of Potential: Areas for Typographic Research in Political Communication.” International Journal of Communication 10: 4570–592.
Skaggs, Steven. 2017. “Motif, Style, Genre.” In FireSigns: A Semiotic Theory for Graphic Design, 203–29. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Week 3: Iconic Brands and Brand Iconicity
Holt, Douglas B. 2004. “What is an Iconic Brand?” In How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding, 1–12. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.
Holt, Douglas B. 2006. “Jack Daniel’s America: Iconic Brands as Ideological Parasites and Proselytizers.” Journal of Consumer Culture 6 (3): 355–77.
Testa, Pierpaolo, Bernard Cova, and Luigi Cantone. 2017. “The Process of De-iconisation of an Iconic Brand: A Genealogical Approach.” Journal of Marketing Management 33 (17–18): 1490–1521.
Week 4: Parasocial Interaction and Personable Brands
Fournier, Susan. 1998. “Consumers and their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research.” Journal of Consumer Research 24 (4): 343–73.
Malär, Lucia, Bettina Nyffenegger, Harley Krohmer, and Wayne D. Hoyer. 2012. “Implementing an Intended Brand Personality: A Dyadic Perspective.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 40 (5): 728–44.
Week 5: The Branded Self
Banet-Weiser, Sarah. 2012. “Branding the Postfeminist Self: The Labor of Femininity.” In Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture, 51–90. New York: New York University Press.
Hearn, Alison. 2008. “‘Meat, Mask, Burden’: Probing the Contours of the Branded Self.” Journal of Consumer Culture 8 (2): 197–217.
Marwick, Alice E. 2013. “Self-Branding: The (Safe for Work) Self.” In Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity and Branding in the Social Media Age, 163–204. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Week 6: Politicized Brands
Banet-Weiser, Sarah, and Charlotte Lapsansky. 2008. “RED is the New Black: Brand Culture, Consumer Citizenship and Political Possibility.” International Journal of Communication 2: 1248–268.
Bennett, W. Lance. 2004. “Branded Political Communication: Lifestyle Politics, Logo Campaigns, and the Rise of Global Citizenship. ” In Politics, Products, and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present, edited by Michele Micheletti, Andreas Follesdal, and Dietlind Stolle, 101–25. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Bailey, James R., and Hillary Phillips. 2020. “How Do Consumers Feel When Companies Get Political?” Harvard Business Review, February 17. https://hbr.org/2020/02/how-do-consumers-feel-when-companies-get-political.
Week 7: Brand Communities
Schouten, John W., and James H. McAlexander. 1995. “Subcultures of Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers.” Journal of Consumer Research 22 (1): 43–61.
Muñiz, Albert M., and Thomas C. O’Guinn. 2001. “Brand Community.” Journal of Consumer Research 27 (4): 412–32.
Cova, Bernard, and Véronique Cova. 2002. “Tribal Marketing: The Tribalisation of Society and its Impact on the Conduct of Marketing.” European Journal of Marketing 36 (5/6): 595–620.
Week 8: Participatory Culture, Alter-brands, and Counter-branding
Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. 2013. Introduction to Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, 1–46. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Hatch, Mary Jo, and Majken Schultz. 2010. “Toward a Theory of Brand Co-creation with Implications for Brand Governance.” Journal of Brand Management 17 (8): 590–604.
Cova, Bernard, and Tim White. 2010. “Counter-brand and Alter-brand Communities: The Impact of Web 2.0 on Tribal Marketing Approaches.” Journal of Marketing Management 36(3–4): 256–70.
Week 9: Networked Branding
Brodie, Roderick J., Maureen Benson-Rea, and Christopher J. Medlin. 2017. “Branding as a Dynamic Capability: Strategic Advantage from Integrating Meanings with Identification.” Marketing Theory 17 (2): 183–99.
Pitt, Leyland F., Richard T. Watson, Pierre Berthon, Donald Wynn, and George Zinkhan. 2006. “The Penguin’s Window: Corporate Brands from an Open Source Perspective.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 34 (2): 115–27.
Billard, Thomas J. 2018. “Citizen Typography and Political Brands in the 2016 US Presidential Election Campaign.” Marketing Theory 18 (3): 421–431.
Billard, Thomas J, and Rachel E. Moran. 2020. “Networked Political Brands: Consumption, Community, and Political Expression in Contemporary Brand Culture.” Media, Culture & Society 42 (4): 588–604.