This book articulates a new theoretical approach to branding, labelled the Communication as Constitutive of Brands (CCB) approach. This approach combines understandings from the CCO (Communication as Constitutive of Organization) perspective with the branding literature.
The author outlines the evolution of corporate branding theory that has developed from an identity approach rooted in signalling theory to an understanding of brands as co-created by multiple stakeholders. She then develops and elaborates the latter approach by formulating and explicating the CCB approach, within which a brand is conceptualized as a discursive brand space grounded in a performative and interactional ontology. Brand discourses are produced in a number of conversational spaces inhabited by both human and non-human actors. Seeing that non-human actors have agency, hybrid agency and ventriloquism are key notions in the CCB approach, and the role of the brand manager is to function as a practical author. The CCB approach is explicated and sustained by five chapters that each elaborate on a certain aspect of CCB and demonstrate the theoretical points in a number of analyses (the process of brand creation, the set-up of conversational spaces, the role of materiality and macro-actors, frame games, and the brand manager as a practical author). The data in the analyses originates from a case that is used throughout the book.
Written for scholars and university students within the field of branding and organizational communication, this book represents an area of developing interest within the field of marketing.