Brand co-creation in multichannel media environments: a narrative approach

ABSTRACT

This paper advances knowledge of the productive, strategically important roles that media consumers play in brand co-creation in the empirical context of multichannel media outlets. Based on a qualitative study, the paper shows how a media company leverages the power of communities and networks in its strategic brand management to engage its consumers in brand co-creation by authoring, contesting, and circulating narratives about the brand and their relationship with the brand in the course of their identity work as individuals and members of the online community of the brand. The paper concludes that in the contemporary co-creative media culture, media managers might need to develop new practices and approaches to brand management that stimulate and motivate brand co-creation all the while preserving the brand’s essence.

KEYWORDS:

• Media brand
• strategic media management
• brand narratives
• brand co-creation
• multichannel media outlets
• identity work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Quoted in Ramaswamy (2009, p. 35).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Saara Bange

Saara Bange is Associate Director at Aalto University Executive Education and Doctoral Candidate at Aalto University School Business, Department of Management Studies. Her research focuses on the human aspects of organizational life: groups and collaboration, interpersonal communication, identity, and our personal purpose at work. Her work has been published in International Journal of Consumer Studies and elsewhere.

Johanna Moisander

Johanna Moisander is Professor at Aalto University School of Business, Department of Management Studies, Finland. Her research interests center on discursive and practice-based approaches to management and organizational studies. She has published her work in Human Relations; International Journal on Media Management; Organization; Organization Studies; Scandinavian Journal of Management, Technological Forecasting and Social Change and elsewhere.

Rita Järventie-Thesleff

Rita Järventie-Thesleff is Professor of Practice and CEMS Academic Director at Aalto University School of Business, Finland. Her research interests currently center on practice-based approaches to management and organization studies as well as corporate branding. Recently, she has focused on media convergence and on the strategic challenges that digital technology and the emerging participatory media culture bring about for organizations. Dr. Järventie-Thesleff has also had a long career as a business practitioner. Prior to her research career at Aalto University she worked for 25 years in international business.