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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the strategies undertaken by “entrepreneurial” universities to leverage their bottom-line especially in response to withdrawals of public funding. Internationalisation has been the most prominent from setting-up overseas branch campuses to aggressive recruitment drives for international students, and more recently, the launch of new programmes to attract a wider market.

Based on a documentary analysis, this study explores the future of curriculum development in entrepreneurial universities, using narratives around an “unconventional course” launch as a case illustration.

The findings reveal an interesting interaction of innovation, opportunity recognition, risk taking and pro-activeness at play within a university environment. The study also highlights how instructors have, in the past, based their syllabi on celebrities – from the Georgetown University to the University of South Carolina, University of Missouri and Rutgers University cutting across departments from English through sociology to Women’s and Gender Studies.

Overall this study captures the relationship between hip-hop artistry and poetry, as well as meeting the demands of society – societal impacts – not the least, bringing “street cred” into the classroom.

The case illustration of a course launch at the University of Missouri linking hip-hop artists to curriculum development and pedagogy, opens up the discourse on the future trajectory of teaching and learning in higher education, with its attendant social implications – not the least for life after graduation.

This study provides fresh insights into the entrepreneurial potential of universities in co-branded/marketing activities with the hip-hop industry.

Drawing on research in the worlds of advertising, magazines and fashion, this paper discusses how celebrities mediate between different fields of cultural production. By focusing on celebrity endorsements in advertising, it also outlines how film actors and actresses, athletes, models, pop singers, sportsmen and women mediate between producers and consumers via the products and services that they endorse. As economic mediators, celebrities’ actions have important strategic and financial implications for the corporations whose products they endorse. As cultural mediators, they give commodities personalities and perform across different media, linking different cultural fields into an integrated name economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of the selfie for marketing management in the era of celebrity. The purpose is to show that the facilitation of the creative performance of consumer identity is a key element of the marketing management task for the media convergence era.

The paper uses the selfie, the picture of oneself taken by oneself, as a metaphor to develop a conceptual exploration of the nature of marketing in the light of the dominance of celebrity and entertainment in contemporary media and entertainment.

The paper suggests that marketing management in the era of convergence should facilitate consumers’ identity projects through participatory and engaging social media initiatives. Marketers must furnish and facilitate not only the props for consumers mediated identity performances, but also the scripts, sets and scenes, plot devices, cinematographic and other visual techniques, costumes, looks, movements, characterizations and narratives.

This is a conceptual paper that sketches out the beginning of a re-framed, communication-focussed vision of marketing management in the era of media convergence.

Marketing managers can benefit from thinking about consumer marketing as the stage management of consumer visual, physical, virtual, sensory and psychic environments that enable consumers to actively participate in celebrity culture.

This paper suggests ways in which marketing practice can emerge from its pre-digital frame to embrace the new digital cultures of consumption.

Established six years ago as a pioneer of short courses for young people wishing to develop their acting skills, the Oxford School of Drama offers unique introductory two‐week acting courses during July and August, and an Edinburgh Festival Performance course of four weeks in August/September. As part of a recent expansion full‐time courses of one year or two for committed students are also offered. Courses take place in a converted eighteenth‐century farmhouse in the rural outskirts of Oxford. A number of famous names are associated with the School. Denholm Elliot is Patron, and Prunella Scales, Roger Rees and Susannah York are just a few of the celebrities already on the invitation list for visiting lecturers in 1987. Courses are run by professional actors and directors whose first‐hand knowledge of the theatre is ideally suited to encourage the aspiring performer. Voice‐training, movement classes, mime, improvisation and the opportunity to “tread the boards” in public are all included in the busy programme. Open auditions in London and Oxford will be held between March and May 1987 to select students for the different courses; experience is not essential.

This paper aims at shedding some light on the various avenues marketers can undertake until finally an endorsement contract is signed. The focus of the study lies on verifying the generally held assumption that endorser selection is usually taken care of by creative agencies, vetting several candidates by means of subtle evaluation procedures.

A case study research has been carried out among companies experienced in celebrity endorsements to learn more about the endorser selection process in practise. Based on these cases theory is inductively developed.

The research suggests that the generally held assumption that endorsers being selected and thoroughly vetted by a creative agency may not be universally valid. A normative model to illustrate the continuum of the selection process in practise is suggested and the two polar case studies (Swiss brand Lindt and Austrian Vitatherm) are presented in depth.

As the results of the study suggest, generally held assumptions towards the endorser selection process may be challenged. Consequently, this affects the necessary accuracy of models to evaluate the brand‐endorser matchup.

Conducted case studies indicate that there are various avenues how brands come to their endorser. This paper could not find evidence of a best practice strategy.

A normative model for the celebrity endorser selection process is suggested.

The integration of social media and e-commerce has resulted in a rising phenomenon among individual content providers (ICPs), who used to offer free content, to provide consumers with paid content, such as online courses, Q&As or consultations. Despite the prevalence of ICPs’ content monetization, empirical research has rarely studied its underlying mechanism. This paper examines how the characteristics of free content contributed by ICPs on social media platforms influence their paid content sales, focusing on the perspective of human brand.

The empirical setting is an online knowledge exchange platform, where users are allowed to provide free content (e.g. answers) on the social media platform and launch paid content (e.g. lectures) on the e-commerce platform. A machine learning technique is employed to construct measures for the characteristics of free content, and fixed-effects estimation is presented to confirm which factors have a significant influence on the sales of paid content.

The empirical results show that the quality, diversity and expertness of free content have a significant positive impact on the sales of the ICP-paid content, with the brand popularity of ICP playing a mediating role.

This study is the first attempt to demystify the relationship between content contribution and ICPs’ content monetization from the perspective of human brand. The findings validate the effectiveness of the “Selling by Contribution” strategy and provide valuable insights for ICPs and social media platforms.