Innovation in Advertising and Branding Communication

Lluís Mas-Manchón

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000198270
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

This book addresses innovative and new aspects of branding and advertising communication, by drawing on a broad, interdisciplinary range of theories, methods and techniques– from body image, identity and mental imagery, to self-exposure and LCM4P – intersecting with branding and advertising constructs and practices.

The editor combines the perspectives of an international group of scholars to establish new theoretical frameworks and proposes new methodological designs to conduct comprehensive studies in the field. Situated at the intersection between society, communication and psychology, each chapter presents an innovative approach to branding and advertising research. The book explores topics such as social robots, body image in video advertising, brand personality, transmedia personal brands, erotic content in commercial images, and brand fandom communities.

Innovation in Advertising and Branding Communication will be a valuable resource for scholars working in the fields of marketing communication, branding and advertising, online communication, sociology, social psychology and linguistics

1
Snapshot and Insights on Theories, Methods, and Topics in Branding and Advertising Research

Lluís Mas-Manchón, Hibai Lopez-Gonzalez, and Frederic Guerrero-Solé

Introduction

The history of communication studies runs parallel to great changes in society, politics, economics, and, ultimately, technology. Media and media communications are both consequence and cause of these changes. However, the scientific historiography of communication (Löblich & Scheu, 2011) has been mostly dominated by a linear, empirical, and quantitative perspective: the media effects paradigm. This paradigm has guided research with respect to, on the one hand, the formulation of problems about the intensity of effects (Neuman & Guggenheim, 2011) and, on the other, the social and cultural impact of media, formats, genres, technology, or agents (emitters). Particularly, the study of advertising, public relations (PR), marketing communications, and persuasive communication has been a fast learner in applying the effects paradigm by importing experimental methods and techniques from psychology and social psychology and empiricism in general from sociology (Faber, Duff, & Nan, 2012; Pitt, Berthon, Caruana, & Berthon, 2005).

The continuous fast-growing changes in technology add relevance and complexity to communications as a mediator of society, business, and politics. Technology and its uses are expanding opportunities for research innovations in branding and advertising.

First, branding and advertising have clearly overcome the notion of communication as the transmission of a message received by a recipient in a determined space and time. Instead, both branding and advertising can be said to constitute a flow of continuous sensory information that is perceived and processed – or ready to be processed – by an active user/consumer. Second, the agent (product, institution, company, brand) that behaves as a stakeholder in this flow of information is not easily (or not at all) recognized. Third, the traditional business model consisting of a well-known monetary investment made by clients (company, brand) and spent lineally from the creators of content (advertisers) to disseminators of this content (media), and finally consumed by users and returned as a margin of the product’s purchases, has turned into many versions and alternatives, facilitating the convergence of interests between media actors and content platforms (brands, journalists, PR, politicians, media industry, fiction, music, marketing, or arts). As a consequence, consumers play an important role in the production and dissemination of the message, and thus have become partially responsible for branding, positioning, and targeting strategies. Fourth, managerial and research interest is turning more than ever to the effects on users’ online and offline behavior, which can be now measured dynamically in real time with available technology. As a result of this, not only is there a need for research on new topics with new approaches and scopes, but there is also a need for consistency and innovation in methods and data sources (Stipp, 2016).

In this chapter, we are going to highlight some paramount contemporary ramifications of the renewed paradigm of (behavioral) interactive effects and its input categories and output outcomes (Eisend & Tarrahi, 2016; Golob, Davies, Kernstock, & Powel, 2020). Specifically, the chapter identifies some of the approaches, topics, and methods that are attracting more interest today as a result of these changes and that could fill the agenda for the upcoming decade: the interplay of brand communication and personal and social identities; the global consumer culture; the long-term effects of advertising; real-time dynamic multisensory information in the forthcoming Internet of Things (IoT); social and public policies; and, in general, the formulation of theories, as well as the application or adaptation of existing ones to the digital sphere (Eisend, 2018; Kim, Hayes, Avant, & Reid, 2014; Schmitt, 2019).

In the next few pages, we will try to provide new insights on the object of study in advertising and branding research, a redefinition of effects, a new approach to the concept of value, the relevance of the global or local scope of research, reliability and validity of methods, and replication of research. Each of these issues is explained thoroughly – namely, we provide paradigm implications, determinants for research, and some recent evidence with new insights (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 New insights on the focus, effects, approach, scope, and methods in advertising and branding research

Issues	Paradigm	Determinants	New insights
Focus: Organization/ brand, message, media, user	Linearity of the effects	Control over the process: resources, content/ message and dissemination	Customer-centric/ community Personalization/ experiences IoT real-time dynamic data Behavioral and multisensory
Effects: Limited, prime, short term	Positivism Experimental research Quantitative methods	Control of variables	Native methods: Qualitative Longitudinal Ethnographic
Approach: Product, brand, values	Marketing CSR Astroturf	Added value Product-based	Value-based legitimacy Political endorsement Data rights
Scope: Global and local	One-sided global consumer culture	Operational Market domination	Culture Nation Regions: Asia, Africa
Robustness: Reliability, validity, replication	Positivism Replication crisis	Cost Western-centrism Digital divide Publication bias	New methods: Psychophysiological measures Representativeness of samples Psychometric validation Artificial intelligence Scientific consensus

Admittedly – and as can be predicted in the following pages and the book as a whole – these topics and methods are all touched by the collapse (or integration) of online and offline contexts (Stipp, 2018), which can be presented as a paradigm shift (Kim et al., 2014; Schultz, 2016). This will be matter for discussion in the “Final Thoughts” section of this chapter.

Focus: Organization/Brand, Message, Media, User

Traditionally, industry resources and research interests were focused on the organization, the brand, the media, and, finally, the effects on the recipient/consumer in a linear fashion. This linearity has been overcome by interactive dynamic flows of information with limited control by the organizations, brands, advertisers, or the media. The well-reported turn of interest to the users’ behavior as creators and disseminators of ads and branding messages is well-reported and has many implications in the (re)definition of the object of study in the field (see Chapter 7 in this book for a specific example of how this linearity can be an obstacle for the progress of research).

Branding is an informative field that underlines those implications. It is well-established today that the identity of brands is co-created between the brand and the stakeholders as a result of interaction (Popp & Woratschek, 2017). On the one hand, brand identity becomes flexible, multiple, and networked (Michel, 2017; Schau & Muniz, 2002; Wallpach, Hemetsberger, & Espersen, 2017). On the other, brand identity is highly dependent on the many different brand communities, which help build genuine relationships through emancipated dialogues (Fröhlich & Schöller, 2012). Also, brands articulate special social ties that are expressed in brand user-generated-content (Br-UGC) (Kitirattarkarn, Araujo, & Neijens, 2019). The organization and the brand have lost the control over the message. The customer (community)-centric approach puts the user as the main (and sometime the sole) protagonist of advertising and branding campaigns. The new insights of this paradigm change are the identification and personalization processes stemming from 24/7 experiences, the potential collection of real-time dynamic data through a growing IoT, and the importance of sensory processing as connecting with behavior interactively.

First, the evolving brand identity is fostering the identification of users with brands and is making them use brands to build and signal their personal identity (Sihvone, 2019; Warren & Mohr, 2019). As shown by Puzakoba and Aggarwal (2018), traditional brand personality strategies may reduce the brand’s distinctiveness and hinder the consumer’s agency to express identity – thus, for instance, more comprehensive communication approaches to brand personality is required (see Chapter 2 for further details).

Following this rationale, consumers use brands in a variety of ways. An interesting research topic is ironic consumption (e.g., wearing a T-shirt with the logos of big oil companies to be critical with the fossil-fuel economy because the wearer is an environmentalist), which, reportedly, only works if the perceiver detects the lack of congruency between this T-shirt and the rest of the signals from the consumer, and this detection is more likely to happen if the perceiver belongs to the in-group (e.g., an environ-mentalist); thus, the ironic consumption signals identity and builds on the social group (Warren & Mohr, 2019). In addition, the personalization or customization of brands, products, or advertising messages is a major outcome of the change of focus in research. This trend relates to the need to feel unique and to build intimate relationships with the brand. Lee and Song show that personalized products need to contain relevant items to consumers; otherwise, a nonpersonalized option is preferable to restore a reduced cognitive control (2019). Vargo, Gangadharbatla, and Hopp (2019) show how hipsters’ subculture spread positive personal brand(ed) experiences in Twitter as an electronic-word-of-mouth (EWOM) to gain social status through exaggeration, according to self-enhancement theory or the positivity bias in social networking sites (SNS). Other research draws on self-construal theory – “people define themselves in terms of the relations they have with others” (Bernritter, Loermans, Verlegh, & Smit, 2017, p. 107) to explain online brand endorsement.

Second, the linear model is illustrated by Lemon and Verhoef’s revision (2016) of the literature on customers’ behavior across the different touch-points with the product, brand, or organization to conceptually integrate the customer experience and brand experience. The customer journey has been defined in five steps of effects/behaviors: awareness, appealing, sharing, buying, and advocating (Kotler, Kartajaya, & Setiawan, 2017). This journey is now better explained as a multilayered global phenomenon strongly determined by digital media and the forthcoming emergence of physical social robots, social bots, and the IoT.

From these particular trends research ideas emerge on the importance of product tangibility, human dimensions of warmth and competence in interaction with robots, personalization of health communication, and sentiments analysis in networks (Schmitt, 2019), or enabling experiences with brands through self-extension (embodiment by virtuality or remote control), and self-expansion (24/7 relationships through sensory connection), as well constraining brand experiences through self-restriction (assemblage theory: threats for freedom and identity) and self-reduction (routine or den...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Snapshot and Insights on Theories, Methods, and Topics in Branding and Advertising Research
• 2 Communicating Brand Personality: Research, Challenges, and Opportunities
• 3 Branded Content: Practices and Governance
• 4 Audio Design in Branding and Advertising
• 5 Social Robots as a Brand Strategy
• 6 Body Image in Advertising Messages: The Influence of Television Advertising on the Construction of Children’s Body Image
• 7 Effectiveness of Sexual Appeals in Print Advertisements: A Dynamic Human-Centric Perspective
• 8 Self-Exposure in Social Media: Teenagers’ Transmedia Practices and Skills for the Construction of a Personal Brand
• 9 Televertising Strategies in the Age of Nonadvertising TV
• Afterword
• Index