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While the branding of individuals has attracted increasing attention from practitioners in recent decades, understanding of personal branding still remains limited, especially with regard to the branding of celebrity CEOs. To contribute to this debate, this paper aims to explore the co-branding of celebrity CEOs and corporate brands, integrating endorsement theory and the concept of meaning transfer at a level of brand attributes.

A between-subjects true experimental design was chosen for each of the two empirical studies with a total of 268 participants, using mock newspaper articles about a succession scenario at the CEO level of different companies. The study is designed to analyse the meaning transfer from celebrity CEO to corporate brand and vice versa using 16 personality attributes.

This study gives empirical support for meaning transfer effects at the brand attribute level in both the celebrity-CEO-to-corporate-brand and corporate-brand-to-celebrity-CEO direction, which confirms the applicability of the concept of brand endorsement to celebrity CEOs and the mutuality in co-branding models. Furthermore, a more detailed and expansive perspective on the definition of endorsement is provided as well as managerial guidance for building celebrity CEOs and corporate brands in consideration of meaning transfer effects.

This study is one of only few analysing the phenomenon of meaning transfer between brands that focus on non-evaluative associations (i.e. personality attributes). It is unique in its scope, insofar as the partnering relationship between celebrity CEOs and corporate brands have not been analysed empirically from this perspective yet. It bridges the gap between application in practice and the academic foundations, and it contributes to a broader understanding and definition of celebrity endorsement.

This paper aims to present an interdisciplinary approach for the development and design of place brands, which goes far beyond communication strategies and advertising campaigns. The so-called “Brand-driven Identity Development of Places” (short: BIDP) approach provides a structured three-phase model that can serve as a practical guide for the development of commercial, touristy, urban and rural places.

Longitudinal collaborative action research over a time span of 20 years plus extended case study research supported the evolution of the BIDP approach.

BIDP is a circular three-phase model starting with the definition of the intended place brand identity, which in Phase 2 becomes translated into concrete touchpoint experiences along the main constituents of the place, and finally materialising into the new place format. The case study of the City of Innsbruck is prototypically used to illustrate the application of the designed approach and to report achieved results.

Place brand development based on translating socio-cultural meanings into touchpoint experiences to materialise and align place constituents is opening up new avenues to initiate and govern place development. At present, the approach is based on case studies in the western region of Austria and South Tyrol.

The three-phase model represents a practical tool for place brand managers, who want to renew and to develop their place format in a structured way. The BIDP model can be applied for all forms of places.

Foremost, the described place branding collaborations reassure the proposition of Olins (2002) and Schmidt (2007) that place branding is a crucial internal project that unites groups of people around a common strategic vision providing sense and direction besides reaching out to the traditional customer–stakeholder audience.

A structured model for brand-driven place development, which evolved during 20 years of longitudinal collaborative action research with executives and representatives of commercial, touristy, urban and rural places, BIDP locks into anthropological research findings where cultural meanings are considered as the main source for the construction of brand identities.

This paper aims to investigate the ways in which “non-collaborative co-creation” can affect brand equity as perceived by independent observers. It reports a study of the different effects on that perception attributable to non-collaborative co-creation that takes the form of either “brand play” or “brand attack” and is executed either by established artists or mainstream consumers.

A 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment (brand play versus brand attack; consumer versus artist) measured observers’ perception of brand equity before and after exposure to purpose-designed co-created treatments.

Non-collaborative co-creation has a negative effect on observers’ perceptions of brand equity and brand attack, causing a stronger dilution of brand equity than brand play. Artists either mitigate the dilution or have a positive effect on those perceptions.

Future research could usefully investigate the relative susceptibility of brands to non-collaborative co-creation, the effects on brands of higher complexity than those in our experiment, exposed in higher-involvement media, and the effects of more diverse forms of co-creation.

Brand managers must recognise that co-creation carries considerable risks for brand equity. They should closely monitor and track the first signs of non-collaborative co-creation in progress. It could be beneficial to recruit artists as co-creators of controlled brand play.

This study offers a more complete insight into the effect of non-collaborative co-creation on observers’ perceptions of brand equity than so far offered by the existing literature. It connects the fields of brand management and the arts by investigating the role and impact of artists as collaborative or non-collaborative co-creators of brand equity.

The aim of this paper, which analyses the use of sports celebrities in advertising discourse, is to understand the strategic use to which brands put them in their commercial and corporate communication on Instagram.

To this end, a content analysis was performed on the Instagram posts of the brands Santander, Movistar, Red Bull and Iberdrola during the period 2021-2022.

The results indicate that, strategically speaking, these brands use the celebrity endorsement strategy to pursue emotional objectives and to adopt a position depending on the type of user. Likewise, these findings show that they single out uniqueness as the principal celebrity characteristic, while also mainly leveraging sports values, especially competence. These values represented by sports celebrities are markedly social in nature, which implies that they enjoy a degree of public recognition that is transferred to the brand to which they lend their image.

The conclusions connect celebrity endorsers with strategic branding issues and aspects of sports.

An empirical approach is followed here to study the representation of sports celebrities in the advertising of well-known brands linked to the sports world.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an innovative branding method based on the hermeneutical approach and interpretive theory, to respond to the need of a simple and effective tool to build corporate identity through an industrial brand identity design and, being a new business, has been considered the brand perception of their stakeholders as the main input to analyze.

The case study of a small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME), that produces nanomaterials for the business-to-business (B2B) industrial market, is used to design the new hermeneutic branding method. The methodology process has been structured in four phases that have marked the investigation and that correspond to four different levels of knowledge that, in succession, between them, constituted the so-called hermeneutic circle.

This new approach allowed us to understand the social phenomenon related to the brand: its characteristic, context and the brand itself. Though hermeneutic analysis has confirmed that business strategy is only part of a more complex system of brand management, it must also consider the competitive environment and the views of the stakeholders.

This paper contributes to research on industrial branding by adopting the hermeneutical approach in managerial practice. This paper is the first of its kind in detail modelling the design phases of a B2B brand, providing an operational tool for marketing specialists.

There is a lack of research studies in the methods for designing industrial brands. The contribution of this paper lies in proposing a new interpretative approach that, acknowledging the different expectations of the stakeholder in the supply chain, allows to draw a B2B brand that communicates the system values of the product and company.

In the democratic digital environment, brand managers frequently deal with the unauthorized use of the brand by third parties. The phenomenon, known as brand hijacking, has been treated in different and sometimes conflicting ways in the academic and professional literature. The aim of this paper is to clarify the meaning of brand hijacking and to shed light on the various motivations and intentions underpinning the phenomenon.

A Delphi-based survey among both academic and professional experts was conducted to explore the key features of brand hijacking and expand existing theories.

The results of the Delphi survey enable the main brand hijacking actions to be mapped, based on two motivational axes (utilitarian–idealistic and destructive–constructive) and on the various intentions that guide the hijackers. The results help re-define the key elements of brand hijacking, through the lens of non-collaborative brand co-creation.

Managerial implications are presented in terms of the corporate response to the two main effects of hijacking, namely, brand reputational damage and brand repositioning.

The paper helps to shed light on the main components of brand hijacking, thus gaining expert consensus in refining the existent conceptualization in relation to a rapidly changing brand management scenario because of the gradual loss by brand managers of their traditional control.

This paper aims to provide conceptual clarity on the different approaches of place branding in the literature. It discusses three main approaches and provides a new definition of place brands that acknowledges the full multi-sensory experience of place brands. This paper also elaborates brand management within the three approaches.

Conceptual paper

This study identifies three co-existing approaches of place branding and provides a definition of place brands for each of them. The first approach conceptualises place brands as symbolic constructs that identify and differentiate places from others. Brand symbols such as logos and slogans are central, assuming that brand meaning resides in them. The second approach views place brands as images and associations in the minds of target groups, whereby brands reside in individuals’ minds (the cognitive). This paper aligns with a third approach that views place brands as experiential, multi-sensory constructs. Brands invite not only mental representations in people’s minds but especially also multi-sensory embodied experiences. The authors thus define place brands as marketing systems that consist of dynamic performative assemblages of symbolic, discursive, institutional and material elements that selectively invite certain multi-sensory and embodied experiences of place by stakeholders and target groups.

This paper contributes to conceptual clarity by providing an analytical framework identifying three main approaches to place branding. The authors further reflect on the implications of each approach for brand management. This paper also builds on recent literatures to provide a new and contemporary definition of place brands as multi-sensory experiences that encompasses embodiment.

This paper aims to help in the development of a better understanding of key brand-related terms and discuss the key challenges and trends in brand management.

This is an editorial based mainly on an extensive and broad literature review on brand management.

First, this work defines some key brand management terms and presents brand-related issues and concerns that remain unchanged over time. Then it discusses some of the brand management-related matters that are changing since the past few years. Challenges for the management of brands from the side of the companies that have introduced them are then presented. It finally provides a glimpse of the five papers selected for this special issue and then identifies avenues for further research.

This work and the whole special issue together help in the understanding of the dynamic nature of the management of brands over time with implications to the management and the academic engagement with brands.

Este artículo tiene como único propósito ayudar en la obtención de una mayor comprensión de conceptos claves relacionados con la marca y presentar los desafíos y tendencias claves en la gestión de ésta.

Editorial basado principalmente una extensión y amplía revisión de la literatura relacionada con la gestión de la marca.

En primer lugar, este Editorial define algunos conceptos clave de la marca y presenta una serie de cuestiones que han permanecido y permanecen invariables a lo largo del tiempo. Posteriormente, discute otra serie de aspectos y cuestiones que están cambiando en los últimos años para a continuación describir los principales desafíos actualmente existentes para la gestión de la marca desde la perspectiva de las empresas. Este Editorial finaliza con una breve presentación de los cinco artículos seleccionados para este número especial así como una descripción de futuras líneas de investigación.

Este Editorial y en su conjunto todo el número especial dedicado a la marca ayuda a una mayor comprensión de la naturaleza dinámica de la gestión de las marcas a lo largo del tiempo y de sus implicaciones académicas y empresariales.

Research has largely disregarded consumer–packaging interaction in contexts other than retail. Focusing on the powerful cue of colour and consumers’ pleas for sustainability and drawing on the customer journey and moments of consumption, this study investigates how packaging colour meanings are redefined from retail to home and how the meaning of sustainability for colour transforms.

A qualitative methodology was employed with 27 informants, who were interviewed in pairs or in small groups of three.

First, colour meanings emerge outside the retail context, confirming the idea of the packaging journey. Colours are dynamic, as meanings are redefined throughout the voyage. In retail, colour conveys brand, product, environmental and origin-related meanings, while at home it conveys product, food- and health-related meanings. At the end of the journey, colour communicates disposal, environmental, health and origin-related meanings. Second, the meaning of sustainability for colour transforms during the voyage from being conveyed by a colour hue to being perceived as a material and, therefore, as a waste and recycling concern.

The study adds insight into the role of colour in the packaging life cycle, wherein colour transforms from a visual packaging cue to an issue of materiality. The recyclability of colours is a prevailing sustainability issue that deserves attention within the packaging industry. The study argues that although the consumer–packaging interaction in the retail context is essential, managers should recognise that the interaction continues with colours from in-store purchase decisions to consumers’ homes (use and recycling).

The purpose of this paper is to analyze customers’ perceptions about brand personality in different cultural environments, checking if the archetypal framework of Mark and Pearson (2001) applies to different brands across countries.

The authors measured consumers’ perceptions in different cultural contexts through a survey, and received 537 valid questionnaires from Portugal, Brazil, Colombia and Peru, countries that have some similar indicators of cultural proximity. The authors wanted to verify if the words and sentences that respondents related to each brand were coherent with the archetype/brand, and the homogeneity of the results in different cultural contexts.

Empirical evidence shows that there is proximity between the literature review and the associations – words and sentences – that consumers from different countries make with those brands. This consistency of results is significantly higher for word associations.

Regardless of the results, the perceptions of consumers expressed through the selected words were often diverse and heterogeneous among countries. This could possibly indicate insufficient efforts from global brands toward a coherent brand personality/global-archetypal approach. Therefore, managing brand personality deserves more attention and marketers must understand consumer behavior patterns in different markets.