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White Bread: A Qualitative Analysis of Current
Branding Practices and Strategic Brand Ambiguity
-Master’s Thesis-
-Graduate School of Communication-
Author: Mădălina Ioana Trușcă Student ID: 10864369
Master’s Programme: Communication Science Specialisation: Persuasive Communication Supervisor: Dr. Daan Muntinga
Abstract
Conventional branding models assert that brands should be simple, clear and consistent. However, iconic brands are rarely simple and numerous scholars argue for complexity and flexibility in branding. This study presents an exploration of current branding practices and of the concept of strategic brand ambiguity (SBA). Strategically ambiguous brands are flexible and complex, they can hold multiple multiple meanings across audiences. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, the study looks into the importance and uses of user-generated content (UGC) in branding, as well as into practitioners’ perspective on brand co-creation and SBA. It shows that SBA is a rather risky but potentially exceptional way to build meaningful brands in the digital age. It concludes that the theoretical concept of SBA needs further exploration before it could establish itself as an influential principle of both branding theory and practice.
Introduction
The classic paradigm in branding posits that to become successful, brands should be clear, univocal, coherent, focused on a stable set of values and characteristics (Aaker, 1996), and that brand communication must be consistent over time, portraying those very few concise and
memorable brand values (Keller, 1999). A brand in this view is solely constructed and controlled by a company and offered to consumers in a static form. Consumers are regarded as passive receivers of marketing communication who have no influence on brand images (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004).
A growing body of literature, however, challenges this classic paradigm by taking into account symbolic aspects of consumption and shedding light on the complexity that branding involves (Allen, Fournier, & Miller, 2008). Brands are believed to be actively co-created by companies, consumers and other stakeholder groups (Hatch & Schultz, 2010), as a result of which brand managers do not have full control over brand meanings (Wells & Hollins, 2002). In this alternative view, consumers are believed to hold sophisticated identities (Barnham, 2009) and use and produce brand meanings in the construction of their self-image (Askegaard & Linnet, 2011). They are no longer seen as passive receivers of brand-related content, but co-producers who adapt this content to their own needs and through that create value for brands (Vargo & Lusch, 2004).
Moreover, technological developments of the past two decades enable the proliferation of user-generated content (UGC), leading to more interactive brand-consumer relationships (Deighton & Kornfeld, 2009). People communicate with and about brands through social media and this trend is increasing exponentially (Heinonen, 2011). Consumers with ever changing needs now engage in both consumption and production of brand meanings online (Muntinga, Moorman, & Smit, 2011), and some scholars argue that brands are subsequently becoming “multidimensional, multilayered
and often polysensual” (Stagliano & O’Malley, 2002, p. 34). To accompany this new brand mindset, flexibility is favoured over consistency.
Flexible brands are those that cater to various consumers with evolving needs (Puntoni, Schroeder & Ritson, 2010). Such brands are strategically ambiguous: they create brand messages that hold multiple meanings and allow consumers to decode brands through their own interpretive frames (Kates, 2004). Brand managers are advised to encourage co-creation (Healy & McDonagh, 2013) and harvest user-generated brand meanings in order to create meaningful brands (Sherry, 2005). In this alternative view, successful brands are those which embrace co-creation of brand meanings and welcome consumers as an active force in brand building (Allen et al., 2008). However, none of these studies suggest whether this is achieved in practice or how it could be achieved.
Through a series of in depth interviews, the present study therefore aims to explore current branding practices. It attempts to answer the question “How does user-generated content (UGC) inform current branding practices?” and assesses the extent to which brands are becoming strategically ambiguous by tapping into user-generated brand meanings.
As millions of people now create and share brand-related content online (Arnhold, 2010) and so considerably influence how brands are perceived (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2010), brand managers face challenges in their practice that classic branding literature does not fully grasp (Berthon, Pitt & Campbell, 2009). Consistency in branding can no longer perfectly accommodate consumers’ thirst for brand co-creation (Brown, 2014a), while the alternative paradigm cannot yet suggest how firm- and consumer- generated brand stories should be managed (Gensler et al., 2013). Consequently, a further exploration of current branding practices and the role consumers play in it is imperative. This study therefore represents a step towards building new theory that can adequately reflect practice and inform future developments in branding.
Theoretical Background Brand Consumption as Self-expression
Advertising and popular culture are deeply intertwined (Fiske, 1989). Advertising creates and transfers meaning into culture and consumers decode these meanings based on their
sociocultural knowledge (Hall, 1980). In fact, both personal and cultural resonance are essential for consumers’ interpretation of brand meaning (Fournier, Solomon & Englis, 2009). Thus, consumers’ brand meaning-making processer are not a mere consequence of brand communication. Past
experiences with the brand or the product category, personal beliefs, as well as sociocultural norms and trends form interpretation frames that people use to decode information (Schroeder, 2009). Moreover, as brand consumption is symbolic (Elliott & Wattanasuwan, 1998), consumers welcome brands into their lives for reasons that go beyond product characteristics. They often choose brands based on the informational and symbolic benefits they perceive (Holt, 2006). They interpret these meanings in order to fit them within their own experiences (Ligas & Cotte, 1999) and to construct and maintain their self-images (Askeegard & Linnet, 2011). Therefore, their individual perceptions of brand meanings are usually idiosyncratic (Alvarez, Trudel, & Fournier, 2014; Elliott &
Wattanasuwan, 1998). Cova and Dalli (2009) go even further and argue that the postmodern consumer is on a never-ending identity quest; hence, different people could use the same brand while extracting totally different meanings out of their consumption.
The Rise of Brand-related User-Generated Content (UGC)
While marketers expected to be empowered by digital media as they thought it would provide affordable and powerful tools for direct marketing, it is now widely known that this digital revolution empowered consumers, rather than marketers (Deighton & Kornfeld, 2009). The great diversification and fragmentation of media and communication channels and the rise of social media and its user-generated content (UGC) have dramatically changed how consumers and brands
interact (Gensler et al., 2013; Sciarrino, 2014) and how consumers interact with each other when discussing brands (Page & Pitt, 2011).
The wide availability of audiovisual technologies allows consumers to create content of such quality that it rivals professionally made ads (Muniz Jr & Schau, 2011). However, one of the main features of UGC is that it is not professionally made, but created by consumers. Moreover, although some could generally define UGC simply as content people create and then share through social media, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development provides us with a more clear definition: In order for content to qualify as UGC, it must (1) be either publicly available online, or available to a selected group of people, (2) it has to show creative effort and (3) it must be made outside of professional contexts (OECD, cited in Kaplan & Hoenlein, 2010, p.61). Brand-related UGC refers to “actively producing and publishing the brand-Brand-related content that others consume and contribute to” (Muntinga et al., 2011, p. 17).
Consumers have always negotiated and reproduced brand meanings, although the
technological developments of the past two decades allow them to create better content and share it with many others online (Fisher & Smith, 2011). The internet enables people to produce and share content without worrying about time or space constraints (Cohen, 2012). Berthon and colleagues (2008) define consumer-generated ads as “any publicly disseminated, consumer-generated
advertising whose subject is a collectively recognised brand” (p.8). Consumers now create and disseminate their own ads and whether honouring, disapproving or even making fun of brands (Berthon & Pitt, 2012), millions of people upload their creative content online reaching other tens of millions (Cova & Dalli, 2009). Thus, social media have catalysed consumers’ possibilities for meaning creation and dissemination.
UGC Illustrates More than Brand Meanings
As previously explained, consumers extract different meanings from the same brand.
al. (2011) found that the motives behind creating brand meanings to be personal identity-building, integration and social interaction, empowerment and entertainment. Similarly, Berthon et al.’s (2008) study found that intrinsic enjoyment, self-promotion or an attempt to change perceptions are the three main reasons why consumers create ads. These findings suggest that brand-related UGC might also tell us something about consumers, not only about the featured brands. As Mühlbacher and Hemetsberger (2008) show, consumers not only communicate about brands, they communicate with and through them and their practices alter brand meanings.
Collectively Creating Brand Meanings: The concept of brand co-creation Critique of the classic paradigm in branding.
The classic paradigm in branding, informed to a large extent by information economics and consumer psychology (Holt, 2004), assumes that brand managers have full control over brand images, while consumers are regarded as passive receivers of brand communication (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Mitchell, 2012; Shankar, Elliot & Goulding, 2001). In this view, brands are fully created by companies and made out of a few unique selling propositions (USPs), a few core values that are clear, univocal and stable over time (Aaker, 1996). In fact, most classic branding literature is either solely focused on how companies attempt to create brands or on how consumers perceive these attempts, neglecting the complexity of brand creation (Mühlbacher et al., 2006).
In reality, branding is much more entangled than this paradigm upholds. Marketers,
consumers and other stakeholders participate in a continuous game of discovering, interpreting and creating meaning (Sherry, 2005) and their game is shaped by culture, aesthetics and history
(Schroeder, 2009).
However, more and more scholars see the normative paradigm as an “old idea” (O’Driscoll, 2008, p. 97) that can no longer serve to explain branding practices in the digital age (Allen et al., 2008). As consumers have become more sophisticated, brands too have become more complex (Barnham, 2009). Berthon et al. (2011) argue that in the past 50 years, they have shifted from
simple signs for distinguishing products from one another towards semi-religious icons. Holt (2004) observes that these changes took the philosophy of branding away from ‘mindshare models’ and USPs towards more experiential and emotional approaches. Culture, he argues, is a major driver of brand creation and successful brands are those that know their place in popular culture. Holt shows that iconic brands are those which identify cultural tensions and tap into the myths emerged to solve those tensions. In this way, a brand is not only shaped by culture, but shapes culture, as well.
An alternative paradigm in branding.
A plethora of theories and empirical findings challenge the classic paradigm (see Allen et al., 2008; Arnhold, 2010; Deighton &Kornfeld, 2009; Mühlbacher et al., 2006; Kates & Goh, 2003). For instance, the Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) tradition dismisses the idea of consumers as passive recipients of marketing communication and regards them as empowered identity seekers, while also taking into account the cultural forces that drive brand creation (Askegaard & Linnet, 2011). The Service-Dominant (SD) logic re-conceptualizes consumers as co-producers of brand value, arguing that they adapt products and services to fit their own needs and by that, shape brand meaning (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). Merz, He, and Vargo (2009) draw on the SD logic and argue that brand creation is a collaborative enterprise which involves not only brands and their consumers, but various other stakeholders, too.
The alternative paradigm draws on postmodern and interpretivist consumer research and focuses on more symbolic characteristics of consumption. Brand meanings are created by
companies, consumers, cultures and the interactions between them, hence brand meaning making is a complex, sometimes ambiguous collaborative process (Allen et al., 2008). Such meaning,
therefore, varies both in time and among consumers (Hatch & Schultz, 2010), across age and social groups (Elliot, 1994), social classes (Holt, 1998) and even within consumers (Alvarez et al., 2014), as their perceptions change over time.
Brand co-creation.
The concept of brand co-creation refers to the fact that brand meanings and value emerge from the stakeholders’ engagement with a company (Hatch & Schultz, 2010). Consumers can co-create unique experiences with companies and these experiences can serve as a great resource for brand building (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004).
Brand co-creation has been empirically proven in several studies (Cova & Pace, 2006; Diamond et al., 2009; Hatch and Schultz, 2010; Merrilees, Miller & Harington, 2012; Brown et al., 2013;Wilson, Bengtsson, & Curran, 2014). Cova and Pace (2006) researched a brand community of Nutella and found that consumers often redefine brand meaning independently of company’s efforts. Hatch and Schultz (2010) looked into a Lego brand community and concluded that brand meanings are co-created by the company, its customers and employees. Wilson and colleagues (2014) found that while brand meaning gaps exist between internal and external stakeholders, as well as among consumers, these meanings are harmonious and together envision the brand.
Diamond et al. (2009) conducted a qualitative study on the doll brand American Girl and found the brand to be complex, multifaceted, with a multitude of brand meanings emerging from various actors, such as the culture at large, American Girl founder’s brand creation myth, company
employees, the young girls representing the target market, as well as their mothers or grandmothers and the company, of course, through all their communication touch points. They describe American Girl as “a disorderly aggregation of complementary and contradictory accounts, filled with
ambiguities that consumers are driven to resolve and lacunae they are compelled to fill” (p. 131). They argue that powerful brands tend to be complex rather than simple; that their power, in fact, comes from their multitude of overlapping brand meanings and the interactions among them.
Embracing UGC in brand co-creation.
All of the studies mentioned earlier inform a participative approach to branding, where brands are actually encouraged to embrace UGC into brand co-creation (Christoduolides, 2009). Haarhoff and Kleyn (2012) advise brand managers to “guide, influence and inspire consumers to co-create brand meaning” (p.112) without imposing control over this meaning. Campbell’s and colleagues’ (2011) findings suggest that brands should immerse themselves in the multilayered, complex, networked conversations consumers bring brands in. Fournier and Avery (2011) argue that social media were created for people, not brands, so when brands entered this new space, they had to change in order to fit in. They state that we now live in the age of open source branding, which “takes place when a brand is embedded in a cultural conversation such that consumers gain as equal, if not greater say than marketers in what the brand looks like and how it behaves” (p. 194). This means that brands must now actively monitor UGC and embrace it with flexibility and opportunism, engaging in “participatory, collaborative, and socially-linked behaviours whereby consumers serve as creators and disseminators of branded content.” (p. 194).
Do Co-created Brands Become Strategically Ambiguous? How should brands embrace co-creation?
A lot of scholarly work suggests that brand managers are losing control over brand meanings (Iglesias & Bonet, 2012) and some suggests that they should willingly let go of control (Fournier & Lee, 2009) . The idea of letting go of control over brand meanings is, however, counterintuitive. Brands have always been thought to be successful when they are distinguishable, memorable, when they offer advantages over competitors, so how could allowing consumers to participate in brand building be beneficial? Iglesias and Bonet advise that practitioners monitor and interpret the meaning that stakeholders attach to a brand, but how much of this meaning should be shaping consequent branding efforts?
Jowitt and Lury (2012) argue that while consumer insight is vital in marketing, brands should stay true to themselves, stick to their values and philosophy. Stagliano and O’Malley (2002) also warn that brands who are too keen on reflecting consumers’ self-image risk losing their
essence, losing themselves. They argue that while engaging consumers is essential, allowing them to be the driving force of brand building is not. However, they also dismiss the idea that brands should be univocal, stable and simplistic and point out their complexity:
“In the real world, brands act as a complex and steady-state stream of verbs, not the simplified nouns and adjectives espoused in brand essence exercises. In other words, a brand is as a brand does, and what it does is an experience of irreductible complexity — multidimensional,
multilayered and often polysensual” (Stagliano & O’Malley, 2002, p. 33)
Their work suggests that brands can embrace co-creation without losing their essence. If brands are multilayered, they can stay true to themselves while also reflecting consumers’ stories. This way UGC can add new layers to brands without endangering their core.
In a nutshell, branding means managing brand meanings (Sherry, 2005). Brand managers have four options when dealing with UGC: they can ignore , fight against, simply monitor or actively exploit it in their strategies (Arnhold, 2010). The fourth option seems to be very popular among scholars (see Fisher & Smith, 2011; Hatch & Schultz, 2010), but while many papers inform us that embracing co-creation can be highly beneficial for brands, no literature shows us whether this is actually done in practice (Gensler et al., 2013).
Co-creation requires flexibility.
Wells and Hallins (2002) draw attention to the fact that co-creation does not mean that all parties have to equally contribute. They argue that brands have to gain an understanding of what can and cannot be influenced in order to enable a co-creation process which suits their goals. Sherry
(2005) even advises them to develop an inventory of emerging meanings surrounding the brand and use it in further branding efforts. He claims that successful brands both reflect and shape people’s thirst for meaning and that practitioners must learn how to gather and interpret UGC in order to create meaningful, flexible brands.
For co-creation to be possible, brands have to be sometimes inconsistent in their
communication (Charters, 2009). Fisher and Smith (2011) encourage them to be flexible, open, “purposefully unfinished” (p. 346) in order to be meaningful, authentic and able to cater for heterogenous consumers with ever changing needs. This idea is also found in Fiske's (1989) work. He argues that media content which is open to interpretation is more likely to be shared, as it is easier to embed in consumers’ self-expression endeavours. Mühlbacher and colleagues (2006) call for an effective way to integrate brand meanings “into a coherent and inspiring frame for the continual, collective and mutual co-construction of successful brands” (p. 8).
Fournier and colleagues (2009) describe multivocality as “the range and diversity of meanings comprising in the brand’s portfolio of associations, as defined across consumers” (p. 46) Thus, multivocal brands invite consumers to participate in co-creation, so they attract a more diverse range of meaning seekers developing, hence, brand strength through numbers. Similarly, Kates and Goh (2003) illustrate the concept of brand morphing, that is “the accommodation reinforcement, and creation of diverse cultural meanings among different groupings of consumers across markets.”(p.59). Thompson (2006) argues that the multitude of brand meanings emerging from various stakeholders can lead to the emergence of a ‘doppelgänger brand image’, which may come in contrast with the company’s intended brand image. In his view, analysing these alternative brand meanings can serve as a diagnosis tool which can help preventing brand image crises.
The concept of strategic brand ambiguity (SBA).
According to Puntoni and colleagues (2010), “the existence of at least two distinct
52) is advertising polysemy. Cecarelli (1998) defined strategic ambiguity as intended polysemy. The author intentionally places at least two different meanings in the same text. “The result of this polysemic reading is that two audiences who would otherwise be in conflict are united in praise of a text” (p. 404). Drawing on Cecarelli’s conceptualisation, Puntoni et al. (2010) develop the concept of strategic brand ambiguity (SBA). SBA means intentional polysemy, “planned by the author and results in groups of readers converging in praise of a text” (p. 53).
Volkswagen’s Da Da Da ad from 1997 (Reeyees3, 2012) is a great example of a strategically ambiguous ad. The video features two young men driving around in a Volkswagen Polo. There is no dialogue, the characters are simply listening to a sequence of Trio’s song, Da Da Da, slightly
moving their heads in sync with the music. The most accessible interpretation of the video is that two friends are just driving around the neighbourhood. However, the full song contains another repetitive sequence: “Da da da I do not love you, you love me not”. This means that those familiar with the song might perceive some romantic tension between the young man. Moreover, as the ad was firstly aired during the ‘coming out’ episode of Ellen DeGeneres’s show, many consumers in the gay community perceived the characters as forming a couple (Johnson & Keith, 2001).
In other words, SBA refers to thecompany’s strategic efforts to create more flexible brands that cater to various consumers with various needs. As consumers decode advertising through their own interpretive frames, certain cues can appeal to some consumers and not to others (Kates, 2004). “Groups of readers will share certain reading strategies in ad decoding, leading to the emergence of a discrete number of viable interpretations.” (Puntoni et al., 2010, p. 57). SBA, they argue, can be used to cater for multiple segments, to express more propositions with one message, to increase liking for the ad or to tackle sensitive social issues without risking backlash.
Using the story of Titanic’s brand as an example, Brown (2014a) shows that brand
ambiguity is more often than not a strength, rather than a weakness. Titanic is unsinkable, yet sank, a ship, yet a symbol, a disaster, yet a film, “a supernatural creature, a sea serpent, a symphony, a
ghost ship, a rusticle-covered coral reef” (p.98). Titanic is an ambiguous brand and it is its ambiguity that makes it powerful (Brown, 2014b).
Puntoni, Vanhamme and Vischer (2011) warn us that although practitioners are showing more and more interest in strategic brand ambiguity, the academic literature on this topic is scarce. An important addition to the SBA notion is Arhnolt’s (2010) user-generated branding (UGB) concept. UGB is the “strategic and operative management of brand related user-generated content (UGC) to achieve brand goals” (p. 331). In other words, it refers to the inclusion of user-generated brand meanings into consequent branding efforts, a co-creation process in which the brand dictates the terms. However, both ‘user-generated brand meaning’ and ‘strategic brand ambiguity’ are rather new, rough concepts in branding research and (perhaps) practice. Maybe, SBA can be achieved through a well-crafted inclusion of UGC in branding. SBA could be the result of brand-controlled co-creation, a tool to keep brands relevant and timely without endangering their core.
According to the previously mentioned studies, practitioners are expected to embed user-generated brand-related content in strategy. According to some, they should pursue strategic brand ambiguity as an effective communication tool. However, no empirical study to date shows us exactly how UGC influences branding practices. It could be the case that UGC is only used for customer insight or simple ad executions, but not considered for long-term branding goals. Perhaps conscripting consumers (Brown, 2004) into brand co-creation results into SBA. Perhaps SBA is based on practitioners’ intuition. Perhaps ambiguity is not a strategy, but a mere consequence of co-creation. What is clear is that the concept is still rough and needs further exploration in order to potentially become an important theoretical concept in branding literature. We argue that this exploration should start with an investigation into how practitioners monitor, harvest, interpret and finally use UGC in developing brands. Moreover, their perceptions of this practice can shed light on the practical relevance of this academic concept.
Method
The nature of the overarching research question, as well as the limited literature available on strategic brand ambiguity require a qualitative study design. Based on a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), the primary goal was to develop new theory. An exploration of current branding practices was therefore conducted through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Netherlands-based practitioners. Semi-structured interviews were chosen because they allow an exploration of informants’ values, beliefs and behaviour without leading them towards desired answers (Bryman, 2008).
Sample
The sampling method was theoretical, described by Flick (2014) as “the royal way for qualitative studies” (p. 115) and advocated by Strauss and Corbin (1998) as the best choice for a grounded theory approach. Theoretical sampling entails selecting research units based on their relevance for the study, not their representativeness of the general population (Bryman, 2008). Thus, interviewees were selected based on their expertise in branding and availability at the time of data gathering, while decisions regarding further sampling were made based on what analysis revealed.
Initially, practitioners from both independent, Amsterdam-based agencies and international ones were contacted. Most of them were selected and recruited through LinkedIn, one of the largest professional networks in the world. This decision was made because LinkedIn provides detailed descriptions of its users’ professional experience, therefore enables the selection of highly skilled and knowledgeable practitioners. Moreover, it is an efficient way of approaching potential
respondents whose contact details are not publicly available. Invitations to participate in the study were sent via the “InMail” feature of LinkedIn. Potential participants were informed that interviews would focus on their experience in branding, that they would last approximately one hour and that their identities would be anonymised.
Interview Guide and Procedure
The interview guide was developed based on the three sensitising concepts emerged from the literature: ‘user-generated content’, brand co-creation and ‘strategic brand ambiguity’. It
entailed a funnel-approach, from very general questions about branding towards more specific ones, tapping into the concept of SBA. Sensitising concepts are often used in qualitative research to provide a general sense of reference and guidance to approach data (Blumer, 1954). A set of ten questions formed the interview guide and served more as discussion topics, rather than direct questions (see Appendix 1). Although sensitising concepts are rarely incorporated in interview guides (Bowen, 2006), in this case it was expected of interviewees to be well acquainted with UGC and brand co-creation. Questions regarding SBA, however, unfolded as each interview progressed. The concept was tackled by the interviewer by subtly leading the discussion towards the idea of flexibility in branding. VW’s Da Da Da commercial (Reeyees3, 2012) was used as an example of a strategically ambiguous ad. Towards the end of each interview, debriefing was done by explaining the concept of SBA to informants, showing them a brief quote describing it, and finally asking for their thoughts on it.
Theoretical saturation was reached after analysing the transcripts of twelve semi-structured interviews, conducted in December 2015 and January 2016. Most interviewees occupied strategy positions in Amsterdam-based advertising agencies. Their job titles ranged from ‘strategy executive’ to ‘senior level brand strategist’, ‘strategy director’, ‘head of brand strategy’ to ‘executive creative director’. Six of them worked for Amsterdam branches of well-known international agencies, three of them were founders and managing partners of independent agencies, two of them were
freelancers and one was the head of brand strategy from a major global social network. Nine of them where male and three female. Most interviews took place at the respondents’ workplaces and lasted between 40 and 90 minutes.
Trustworthiness and Authenticity
Guba and Lincoln (1994) argue that reliability and validity are not optimal assessment criteria for qualitative research and propose trustworthiness and authenticity as viable
alternatives. Trustworthiness is made out of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability, which mirror internal validity, external validity, reliability and objectivity,
respectively. Authenticity entails fairness, ontological, educative, catalytic and tactical authenticity. However, not all criteria they propose are relevant for the present study. For instance, tactical authenticity refers to empowering informants to engage in action towards change. This study investigates current practices in branding without aiming to change perceptions or behaviour. Besides, as Bryman argues, authenticity is mostly reflected through the components of
trustworthiness and its independent assessment is rarely done and at times controversial (Bryman, 2008). Thus, only the relevant assessment criteria are discussed below.
While recruiting Netherlands-based practitioners for the study was highly convenient, convenience was by no means the only reason behind this choice. Amsterdam, with its over 100 creative agencies, both local and international, has one of the most vibrant advertising industries in Europe and campaigns developed here are often implemented internationally (Röling, 2010). Moreover, as only five respondents were Dutch and all twelve had worked on various international accounts, we argue that findings are transferable beyond the Dutch communication landscape.
All materials involved in or emerging from this study, such as reading notes, e-mail and LinkedIn communications, recordings, field notes and transcripts, have been kept in order to ensure dependability and confirmability. Respondents’ names have been anonymised and so has been whatever might be regarded as commercially confident information. Respondent validation, meant to ensure credibility of the study, was done at the end of each interview, by asking respondents to sum up their thoughts on SBA. In addition, documents related to data analysis were also saved in
order to prove the relation between data and theoretical developments which emerged and through that reinforce the credibility of the research.
Data Analysis
The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim through Wreally’s Transcribe software, resulting in a 98 pages document, which was further analysed with Atlas.ti following open-axial-selective coding of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Data analysis was done based on Friese’s (2012) guidelines for qualitative data analysis. The sensitising concepts played an essential role in the analysis without limiting our exploration. Open coding identified 263
quotations relevant for the research questions and 156 open codes. Axial coding involved merging and structuring codes into 26 categories. Selective coding yielded 4 themes, 3 informed by the three sensitising concepts and one solely emerging from the analysis. The concept-indicator model was developed through Atlas.ti’s network view function. Two of the sensitising concepts and the newly emerged theme turned out to be dimensions of SBA, which together have 7 roots (See Appendix 2).
Results
Our results illustrate some uses of UGC in branding, as well practitioners’ perception of and experience with brand co-creation and strategic brand ambiguity. In a nutshell, UGC is welcome by brands in co-creation and co-created brands have a high chance of becoming strategically
ambiguous. Moreover, another theme emerged from the data: the idea of human brands, as well as the concept of ‘dynamic branding’. These two new concepts not only fit the theory of SBA, but help developing it. The Results section is, of course, structured according to the concept-indicator model, which can be found in Appendix 2.
UGC as an Important Brand Asset
User-generated content can be used as customer insight, as an evaluation tool, and to co-create brand meanings. As the quote below shows, UGC is regarded by informants as a highly valuable asset for a brand
“User-generated content is obviously a very important asset for a brand. Agencies all over the
world are trying to tap into the boundless potential of their fan base, using their voice and creativity to fuel their marketing initiatives. It’s only natural – the message is so much stronger when it comes from a user rather than a brand.” (Informant #8, male, communication manager, international
branding agency)
Various, but fluid conceptualisations of UGC.
Conceptualisations of UGC vary among informants. While some of them do not see simple user reviews or tweets as UGC, some consider it to be any kind of brand-related content.
Instagrams, product demos, user-generated brand designs and spoofs in their opinion all qualify as UGC. Simple text can be seen as user-generated content too, as long as it goes beyond opinions and complaints and captures brand meaning. At the same time, practitioners believe the concept should be fluid in order to accommodate various situations in which this content is monitored, interpreted and used. Unsurprisingly, professionals in digital agencies rely on UGC more than those in
traditional advertising agencies. The following quotes illustrate informants’ views of what UGC is:
“UGC..it's a little bit of a word that placed this phenomenon in one specific box and now the box is
gone. If there’s a definition of UGC, the definition should be open. User-generated content can be anything, that can be a little film or a photo or your reactions on social, like your post at a festival.”
(Informant #5, male, managing director/founder, local creative agency)
“I don’t know if the definition is correct, but to me, user-generated content is where people
of expand your brand story or reach.” (Informant #9, male, strategy director, international
advertising agency)
Monitoring UGC.
When it comes to monitoring UGC, most practitioners admit that they would like to have more time and resources to do this. Although Hootsuite, Sysomos, Spredfast, IBM Watson and other tools of social listening are heavily used to map consumers’ minds, practitioners think quantitative data can never paint the whole picture. The monitoring software they use is often based on
keywords and although it can reveal UGC, it does not grasp the meanings it embeds. As informants believe being in touch with your customers goes beyond graphs and numbers, their search
sometimes goes beyond social listening towards seeking UGC by manually searching the Web .
“I think blindly just looking at data... You can cut data 50 different ways till it serves your purpose. I
can tell 10 different stories with the exact set of data, so… It shows trends and gives indications of where people are, so I think on such a large level you are able to see trends on that. But at the end of the day, you almost have to go down on a granular level and actually read some of the posts and go look at some of the content.” (Informant #12, female, head of brand strategy, social network)
UGC as valuable customer insight.
UGC provides informants a more clear picture of who their audience is. When creating brand related content, consumers communicate who they are, what they care about, what their aspirations are. In this way, UGC serves as customer insight, it provides brands with a sense of who they are interacting with. As the two quotes below illustrate, UGC is highly valued by creative agencies for the customer insight it holds:
“I think that's the most valuable piece of content we can get, more than any other quantitative data,
like numbers and such.” (Informant #10, male, creative technologist, international digital agency)
“It's something really to gain insight into the behaviour of consumers, of humans, to kind of figure
out what they think, what they care about, what they want...so in that way, UGC is very valuable.“ (Informant #9, male, strategy director, international advertising agency)
The importance of context in which UGC emerges.
However, UGC can serve as great customer insight only when seen in context. Brands have to be responsive to whatever happens in society. Informants believe that although once brands used to be conversation topics, they now function more as platforms for conversation. Consumer-generated ads might feature a brand, but focus on social or cultural issues to the point where the brand is merely a prop. In these circumstances, one has to step back and get a broader view, then think carefully about how brand meanings, both company- and user-generated, reflect and shape culture. In line with Holt’s (2004) view, practitioners acknowledge the importance of popular culture in branding:
“Brands can’t exist in a vacuum, there’s stuff that’s going on in the culture that brands can respond to. Brands have the ability not only to reflect what’s going on in the culture but also create it as well.” (Informant #6, female, strategic initiatives director, international advertising research
agency)
“I’d say UGC is very important, but not just look at the content. You should look at the total way
you engage with your target group” (Informant #1, founder/managing partner, local mobile
UGC as an evaluation tool.
Brand-related user-generated content can serve as a sort of evaluation tool. Its mere existence shows that people are engaging with the brand, that they want to be part of the brand. UGC drives brand awareness and strengthens customer-brand relationships. When it comes to spoofs,
practitioners adhere to the idea that “There is no such thing as bad publicity”. When people create brand-related content, they do create buzz around the brand. Of course there is a risk of parodies affecting brand images, but recent examples, such as Volvo’s Epic Split, indicate that this risk is rather low. In addition, practitioners believe that if people complain about a brand, it means they are still interested in maintaining a relationship to it. Otherwise, they say, they would just walk away. “Copying is the best way of flattering. I think that when you are being parodied means at least that
your message has been seen, so that's a good thing about it. If it's always a good thing… I don't know. So,it depends very much on tone of voice, I think. Like for Volvo with all the parodies on the epic split... That was really good.” (Informant #3, male, founder/executive creative director, local
advertising agency)
“Well, you know...there's no such thing as bad publicity in a sense. If people are talking about you,
hopefully they are talking about you for the right reasons, even if it is a spoof. I think it's a positive thing.” (Informant #11, female, freelancer)
At the same time, UGC can serve as a diagnosis tool (Thompson, 2006). It can illustrate brand meanings that are undesirable by brand managers and by analysing it, informants believe they have better chances to avoid brand image crises:
“When your customers share your products or photographs of them or whatever they want, if that doesn't match your brand, then you have a problem as well. It happened before social media too, it happens whenever someone takes your product and does something else with it” (Informant #4,
male, strategist, full-service digital agency)
UGC as source of brand meanings.
There is a general consensus among practitioners that a lot of UGC is simply noise and of low quality. It can serve as a source of brand meanings and inspiration for further branding efforts, but it is nowadays rarely incorporated in practice in its original form. The following quote from an informant illustrates this aptly:
“It’s really bad quality. And we never use UGC by itself. If we do something like that, it's consumer
inspired and brand curated” (Informant #3, male, founder/executive creative director, local
advertising agency)
Brands are interested in and inspired by UGC, they harvest fans’ creativity, yet practitioners are looking for the meaning, rather than the actual content. A few years ago, brands were very keen on getting consumers to create such content, but they soon realised that simply asking consumers to create ads is risky and very often ineffective. In fact, some practitioners believe that best UGC is coming out of brand love, not because campaigns ask for it. Consumers create such content anyway and their ideas can be used in consequent branding efforts, once they are refined by creative
professionals who hold the necessary skills.
“There was a time… And it’s passed now thank God… That kind of ‘Help us create our new ad type’
into: The brand puts something out there and consumers can take it and make it their own. If that happens, that is definitely a good thing and brands are really aware of that.” (Informant #6, female,
strategic initiatives director, international advertising research agency)
The previous quotes shows that in the past few years, practitioners have evolved in their
understanding of UGC and no longer simply require consumers to create it. They now understand more of its challenges and opportunities.
How Practitioners View Brand Co-creation
Informants are familiar with the concept of brand co-creation, but they have an ambivalent approach to it. They make a clear distinction between brand co-creation as a social phenomenon and brand co-creation as branding practice. As a social phenomenon, co-creation is inoffensive and inevitable. As a branding practice, it is welcome as long as it is heavily controlled by the brand.
Brand co-creation as a social phenomenon.
As the quotes below point out, co-creation as a social practice is hardly new. Informants believe consumers have always created adjacent brand meanings and through that, have participated in brand co-creation. This view on co-creation, therefore, does not entail brands actively
participating in it. It mostly refers to something that simply happens in society and does not affect brands much, unless they embark on it.
“[Volkswagen’s]’60s Lemon hippie thing, which was, I think, one of the first co-creations. People
painting your product with peace symbols” (Informant #4, male, strategist, full-service digital
agency)
“[Co-creation ] has been going on for years. I mean decades, like fanzines and things like that... We
are just seeing it evolving into different media now, so it's always great.” (Informant #11, female,
As implicitly stated by informants, thinking about it in macro terms, co-creation is
inoffensive and avoidable. Informants believe people have and always will create brand meanings and attach them to brands. When these meanings are informed by a vital sociocultural trend, they are more likely to create strong brand associations, like the ones between the VW van and the hippie movement.
Brand co-creation as a branding practice.
When discussing brand co-creation as a branding practice, practitioners believe this has intensified with the emergence of digital technologies, but they are still rather reluctant towards it. They think it should be approached wisely, given the risks it presents. While some scholars argue that in the age of co-creation brands should be less obsessed with control over the brand meanings, practitioners could not disagree more. Co-creation is welcome when creating ad executions, developing product innovations and even in brand communication, but it should not shape the core values of a brand, just as Jowitt and Lury (2102) argue.
“I would not say that brands as in identity of the brand is being co-created, that is definitely not the
case frequently. Yet, products and services are definitely co-created” (Informant #6, female,
strategic initiatives director, international advertising research agency)
Instead, providing customers with a well-defined framework in which they can ‘play’ with the brand is not only desirable, but increasingly important:
“I still think there are some things as core values. You should define a framework in which people can operate. It’s a canvas with a border around it and you can outline in certain ways how people can interpret your brand or use it. You should keep a lot of open space for them to make it their own brand” (Informant #1, founder/managing partner, local mobile advertising agency)
Some informants admit that the idea of giving up control stands against what they were trained to do. Inviting consumers to create brand meaning can turn into a tedious and not always fruitful process.
“Because, you know… ‘Let’s just get consumers to do our job for us, let’s get everybody in a
brainstorm!’ That’s like a creative’s worst nightmare. Because they come up with a hundred ideas, but actually the real important part of the creative process is when you find your own… come up with hundreds, and then actually only one is really good, and you build from that.” (Informant #6,
female, strategic initiatives director, international advertising research agency)
Informants agree that any brand needs a very strong core. In order for co-creation to be successful, brands must be very certain of who they are, what they stand for. If a brand is multilayered, the very first layer is strong, unique, coherent and consistent. An important pre-condition for co-creation is controlling the brand threat, ensuring the core values are in place. Otherwise the brand can get lost through the clutter.
“There is an important condition and that is that you control the brand threat, so if you let it go and
it ends up in inconsistency and just messiness then you've lost control of the brand and it means you're losing track, people won't have a consistent idea anymore. So yeah, I'm very much in favour of the liberation and we do a lot of those, but we always have to have a pretty clear definition of within what terms we collaborate.”(Informant #3, male, founder/executive creative director, local
advertising agency)
As the previous quote illustrates, practitioners prefer to have a very clear definition of the terms in which they collaborate with consumers, although this definition can change from case to case. The terms of co-creation, as well as the degree of control varies from brand to brand. For some brands, co-creation is impossible, for some inevitable. Some brands enable co-creation when
it comes to new products or services, while others are interested in allowing consumers to participate in brand building. In between, it’s brand managers’ job to find the balance.
Another important aspect of brand co-creation lies in the consumers’ willingness to participate, as well as their creativity. Practitioners believe that consumers are more likely to participate in co-creating high involvement, lifestyle brands. Moreover, not all age groups are expected to be equally interested in co-creation. As the quote below shows, millennials are seen as a ‘co-creation, collaboration generation’. They enjoy engaging with brands online, through imagery and video. They use brands to express themselves and through that, they create a lot of brand meaning brand managers can hardly ignore.
“When you start looking at millennials, you see that they are a co-creation, collaboration
generation. What that means is that they are partnering with brands all the time” (Informant # 7,
male, freelancer)
Although various forms of co-creation emerge across industries, product categories,
involvement and audiences, there is no simple recipe for success. The challenge practitioners face is to arouse consumers’ engagement and creativity without endangering the brand’s core.
Human brands encourage engagement
Consistent with Fournier and Avery’s (2011) views, respondents believe brands in the digital era have to be more interesting, transparent, open, responsive, flexible and timely.
“That’s where transparency and being authentic comes in because brands have entered spaces
which were not created for brands. They were created for people and they were created for a purpose to connect us and help us live our lives in a more connected way” (Informant #7, male,
Before the digital revolution, most branded content was simply received by consumers in rigid formats through radio, TV or print ads. As brands have entered the social media realm, they were forced to adhere to more flexible principles, to be responsive, flexible, to engage in real time conversations with consumers and other brands. The internet has also forced brands to be more truthful and transparent. Any faux pas is easily spotted and called out by the empowered consumers. As the previous quote shows, brands have entered a space that was created for people. In order to adapt, they have to become more “human,” they have to engage in real conversations and
emotionally appeal to people. Practitioners also believe that people trust people more than they trust brands, so brands should be more human to be trusted. Human nature is complex, so human brands are complex, too. They have a stable core, as if they are always the same person, but their behaviour varies across situations:
“People trust people more than they trust brands. That's a basic starting point, so you don't trust
there's a brand, they must be more human to be trusted. “ (Informant #3, male, founder/executive
creative director, local advertising agency)
Over two thirds of the respondents prefer to take a human perspective on branding. They believe brands are like friends, good friends. A good friend is honest and likeable but adaptable to various social situations. At the same time, friends will exhibit different moods. People are
sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes funny, sometimes solemn. The same goes for brands, as these two practitioners beautifully pointed out:
“Think of me as a brand. I'm me, but I'm a brand. You'll find me in different moods, but it doesn't
mean I'm an incoherent person. So I think we will look more at the way humans behave because brands behave that way”(Informant #4, male, strategist, full-service digital agency)
“I mean...you're the same person but when you go to a party you look different than when you go to
or the core focus or the essence of the brand or, for us, the story, is...should be stable, consistent and coherent, but make it flexible, because then you stay interesting!” (Informant #5, male,
managing director/founder, local creative agency
“So what you see is that when a brand has set themselves as a persona, that’s almost like in a role
to communicate, you’ll see a lot of user-generated content” (Informant #12, female, head of brand
strategy, social network)
The previous quote suggests that consumers are more likely to engage with brands who act like humans. Informants believe all brands should be more human, but with strong personalities. Human brands are expected to interact with consumers, but this does not mean they are supposed to completely mirror them.
“Think of a brand as a human, you can't just copy what the consumers are saying, that would be
like you or me just being whatever people want us to be. I just think...of course you listen to what your consumers are saying, but every good brand has their own strong beliefs in terms of who they are, what are they looking to achieve, what their mission is, so I think you have to balance
that” (Informant #11, female, freelancer)
This fits Ceccarelli’s (1998) idea of strategic ambiguity. Balancing between mirroring consumers and keeping the brand’s core can be achieved by embedding more than a single meaning into a text.
Between consistency and flexibility, towards dynamic branding
While all practitioners agree that any brand needs a strong, consistent core, some believe in flexibility more than others. Although they are not familiar with the concept of strategic brand ambiguity, some practitioners illustrate great examples of strategically ambiguous brands both from their own work and observations they made on current branding practices. As the next two quotes
show, informants refer to something quite similar to SBA, although they call it fluid branding, multiview branding and most often: dynamic branding.
“I completely believe in flexibility. This is a big thing for us, I call it multiview branding. I invented
it like years ago […] so yeah, do that, but keep a very coherent core”(Informant #5, male, managing
director/founder, local creative agency)
“The brands who are getting it right are the ones who’ve embraced all the challenges in being a
really dynamic voice within a dynamic social space. And the ones who aren’t getting it right are just being very pushy and very one-dimensional and not very human” (Informant # 7, male, freelancer)
A few respondents tackled the notion of SBA before the interviewer explained what it stands for and illustrated it with a few examples from the literature, such as Old Spice (Gensler et al., 2013) or Skittles (Fournier & Avery, 2011). Out of those, only two provided examples of ambiguity from their own work. This indicates that if the future is about dynamic brands, the future is not here yet.
“I think we’re moving towards what I call dynamic brands or dynamic branding, which means that brands deliberately change their moods. […] For me the future of branding is with dynamic brands that respond to us at the right moment, that understand our mood and mirror that.[…] I think as soon as we have the idea that a brand is dynamic, it's full of ambiguity, it's not a fixed thing, it becomes a living breathing emotional...it has emotions and sensitivity.” (Informant #4, male,
strategist, full-service digital agency)
Finding the balance between consistency and flexibility is easier when the consistent core represents a universally recognisable concept, respondents believe. Notions such as love, peace, or beauty hold various interpretations across cultures, they are abstract and easy to grasp at the same
time. One example that often comes up is Coca-Cola’s happiness. Coca-Cola is always happy, it has always been happy, but this rather abstract core offers the brand a multitude of possibilities when it comes to campaigns targeting various segments across cultures. What is very interesting is the fact that almost all respondents referred to this brand, although half perceive it as a static, while the other half as dynamic:
“If you look at Coca Cola, they are doing the same thing they were doing 20 years ago or 30 years
ago or even 40 years ago.” (Informant #2, male, strategy executive, international advertising
agency)
“I think they [Coca Cola] are flexible in their consistency because it is just about happiness, but
they do that in different ways” (Informant #11, female, freelancer)
Practitioners agree that ambiguous or not, a brand will be perceived differently among consumers. It’s only human nature, they say, that we each interpret the world around us in our own ways. Any text holds multiple meanings, they argue and that is something one has to consider when creating brand communication.
“I think the most beautiful quote is ‘building empires of the mind’, If you're doing that, you're always leaving room for interpretation, everyone has their own interpretation in the end for what the brand stands for, it's never rock solid. In the end, we don't even know if we all perceive the world in the same way, we all just kind of assume you perceive this meaning the same way I perceive it, so in that sense brands are never finished and always flexible…” (Informant #9, male,
Informants who totally embrace the idea of flexibility, those who believe the future lies in dynamism, are in most cases those involved in digital branding and story telling. Respondents with a traditional advertising background tend to be more resistant to change and very keen on the importance of consistency in most branding aspects. Most of these practitioners even describe themselves as ‘old school’ and they consider Byron Sharp’s (2010) How brands grow to be the essential book on branding. Apart from those very few who have actually built dynamic brands, practitioners believe that SBA might sound great in theory, but it is difficult if not impossible to apply in practice:
“I think if you can create an ad that does that, that’s awesome, because it creates a really
compelling rich story, multilayered, that you know, works for different people. I think brands are multifaceted as well. I don’t think that the brand can just be one thing anymore” (Informant #6,
female, strategic initiatives director, advertising research agency)
“So to try to make a piece of content that connects emotionally to people on multiple levels in
multiple ways… it's almost like the impossible brief. I think in theory it's a great thing. "I create one piece of content and it works on multiple levels and all media channels" If I got that as a brief, I'd be like "Are you kidding?" And I think what happens is that you're running the risk of being blunt and not standing for anything. So you're like a piece of white bread, you can put chocolate on it, you can put butter on it, you can make it into a hot dog bun, it can be everything you
want” (Informant #12, female, head of brand strategy, social network)
The previous quote draws a very nice analogy between strategically ambiguous brands and white bread. Although the informant did not mean it in a positive way, a strategically ambiguous
brand can be everything the consumer wants and that is where its strength lies. This, however, does not mean it has to be blunt or confusing.
The best example of what we have called SBA throughout this paper comes from a senior-level strategist at a full service digital agency with multiple offices across Europe. Out of the twelve interviewees, this practitioner not only believes in SBA, which they call dynamic branding, but sees how digital branding requires a way of thinking that comes in contrast with what a traditional branding approach entails.
“I did branding for [major airline] and I tried this idea with them and they were like "This is
weird". Although there is ambiguity, there is deliberate ambiguity in this brand, so there's light, ambiguity light and I can explain how it works. But the idea is basically that you can have a brand with different moods and based on the mood it behaves differently but it will still be coherently the same personality. And I think that's digital brands because in the end, in digital...we want brands to be responsive, to be interactive. If I talk to you and you're always happy, it's weird. And also...if I'm having a bad day, I want sympathy. If I'm having a good day, I want you to be happy with me. We kind of...we mirror each other. […]So I think that's the future. The issue is in the industry most branding people come from traditional advertising background. And they are not technological or they don't think about things like interaction, they just don’t… It's sort of two worlds colliding. And most digital agencies don't know what branding is.” (Informant #4, male, strategist, full-service
digital agency)
This quote well illustrates the concept of ‘dynamic branding’, which was mentioned and illustrated by a few of the twelve interviewees. At the same time, it points out the tension digital disruption has brought in to the branding practice: It seems that some professionals have already embraced both challenges and opportunities the internet has brought in, while others still remain devotees of traditional branding practices.
However, all practitioners agree that SBA needs a better name. The word ‘ambiguity’ carries negative connotations. Although the perfect balance between consistency and flexibility in
branding is envisioned differently across the industry, brands are supposed to be recognisable and ambiguity is not the word any practitioner would use to describe this strategy.
“Ambiguity isn’t quite right, it sounds bad. I’d go for flexibility” (Informant #11, female, freelancer) ‘Dynamic branding’, instead, sounds better and it appears to reflect a very similar concept. A dynamic brand carries multiple interpretations not only across audiences, but also across time. Dynamic branding requires strong core values, but flexibility in communication. Dynamic brands behave more like humans, they have moods expected to change according to the situation, touch point or targeted audience.
Conclusion and Discussion
This study provides an exploration of current branding practices and illustrates the
importance and uses of user-generated content, practitioners’ approach to brand co-creation, as well as their perception of strategic brand ambiguity. It provides a detailed description of how branding professionals monitor, harvest and re-shape UGC in consequent branding efforts.
In a nutshell, UGC is an important brand asset sought by practitioners and used as customer insight, evaluation tool and source of brand meanings. UGC is welcome in brand co-creation, as long as it fits the brand’s repertoire of meanings. In spite of what the literature suggests, informants are not likely to willingly give up control over brand co-creation. Brands, in their view, are only marginally shaped by consumers. The distinction they make between co-creation as social phenomenon and as branding practice indicates that on a macro level, they acknowledge the fact that brand managers do not have full control over the brand meanings. However, when thinking about their own, day-to-day practice, they think they have quasi-full control over their brands. Something very similar to what we have described as strategic brand ambiguity exists in their
repertoire as “dynamic branding.” SBA presents itself as a rather risky, but potentially exceptional way of creating meaningful brands in the digital age.
UGC in current branding practices
User-generated content informs current branding practices in various ways. Namely, UGC can serve as great customer insight, as a driver for brand awareness and as a source of brand meanings that can potentially become part of branding strategy. Our findings suggest that a closed definition of UGC would only limit practitioners’ experience with it. What counts as UGC should vary depending on the goals. For instance, user reviews can serve as great customer insight, but not so much as source of brand meanings. User reviews usually depict instrumental benefits of products and they rarely reflect consumers’ interpretations of brand images. At the same time, spoofs might not always benefit brand attitude, but they drive brand awareness and can picture doppelgänger brand images (Thompson, 2006)
On Brand Co-creation
When it comes to brand co-creation, UGC is sought, appreciated and used, as long as it fits with the brand’s personality. Co-creation is perceived as an opportunity for consumers to play with the brand without endangering its core values. Moreover, this process varies in layout and intensity across industries, product categories and targeted audiences. High involvement and lifestyle and ‘human’ brands are regarded as more likely to foster consumers’ engagement in co-creation, while millennials are perceived to be a collaborative generation who engages in such activity more than older audiences.
On Strategic Brand Ambiguity
Our findings also suggests that the concept of strategic brand ambiguity needs further exploration and for practitioners, a better name. The word ‘ambiguity’ holds negative connotations and lies in contrast with practitioners’ fundamental idea that brands must still hold a coherent core.
Perhaps ‘dynamic branding’ would become the term used in practice, while SBA should remain an academic concept. More important than the terminology, however, is the fact that this practice is regarded as new and rather risky. Only very few practitioners have provided examples of the dynamic brands they had built, while most of them fear creating confusing brands through extreme flexibility. Interestingly but not surprisingly, practitioners in digital agencies are more open-minded than those in traditional advertising agencies. They understand the inherent flexibility of digital branding and are more likely to take risks than their counterparts. This means that although in general this is rarely the case, theory is ahead of practice. Perhaps the trends scholars have observed on a societal level are not yet observable on a granular one. Perhaps practitioners tend to believe they hold more control over brands than they actually do. In fact, our findings suggests so, since even respondents who were very keen on their consistent branding provided examples of dynamic brands, even from their own practice. A possible explanation for this contrast comes from Wells and Hollins (2002), who state: “Somehow we have created illusions about how much control we really have. Of course, this is for a good reason: we want to keep our jobs” (p.89).
A very interesting finding that can point towards finding the balance between consistency and flexibility is the fact that brands which hold abstract cores may easily be flexible without
endangering them. Coca-Cola’s happiness, Dove’s real beauty, or GE’s imagination at work are very coherent concepts that can be expressed and played with in a multitude of ways across media
channels and target audiences. Such universally recognisable values allow fruitful co-creation and appeal to basically everyone.
A recent example of strategic brand ambiguity is illustrated by Axe’s global campaign “Find Your Magic”. Created by Amsterdam’s 72andSunny agency, the new campaign follows right in the steps of Dove’s ‘Real beauty’ towards encouraging self-acceptance in men of all shapes, sizes and styles. As Axe’s global vice president stated, Axe has always been about attraction (Oster, 2016). However, the new campaign replaces the old hyper-sexual, muscular, womaniser image of the Axe
man with a very inclusive definition of what attraction entails. Again, an abstract core, ‘attraction’, allows all consumers to relate with the brand when executions do not specifically show what an attractive man should look like.
Implications for theory and practice
Our findings suggest that the classic paradigm is no longer capable to fully inform current branding practices. Brands in the digital age need to be more flexible and interactive. This
interaction makes them more human, more complex, hence they can no longer easily fit in pyramids, quadrants, onions or other classic branding models.
At the same time, our results add to the theory of SBA by showing that it should entail various meanings not only across audiences, but also across time. Just as the friend who does not always tell the same story, strategically ambiguous brands should reflect different aspects over time, while maintaining a coherent core. In fact, we argue that the theory of SBA should specify that while multiple meanings are welcome, the brand’s core should always be evident and easy to decode by all audiences.
Theory, as well as our findings, suggest that the future of branding lies in brands’ capacity to adapt to interactive environments. The most important practical implication, therefore, is that practitioners should be more open-minded and accept that some traditional advertising tenets are outdated. Our findings show that informants involved in digital branding are not only aware of the opportunities SBA brings in, but they have also already successfully engaged in creating
strategically ambiguous brands. Practitioners in traditional advertising practice should catch up. Another practical implication of our study refers to SBA’s name, which will most likely never be used in practice. ‘Dynamic branding’, we argue, might well soon appear on most agencies’ ‘Services’ page.
