CEO sociability: path towards brand equity and brand relationship

The current business context is highlighted by the need for information. Moreover, stakeholder’s considerate that it is imperative to establish transparency and mutual understanding. A constant request that transparency and Approachability should come from the brand's internal environment, justifying its true essence while humanizing its value to the community. Here, certain brands have introduced the continuous intervention of their CEOs, acting as a brand ambassador and the embodiment of its characteristics. Leaders who now act on relationship building, benefit Brand Equity and stakeholders' brand perception over its intangible value. However, this evidence contrasts with the academic development around this topic, assuming an embryonic stage and for which this research seeks to build understanding. This dissertation seeks to highlight the links between concepts and explore the influence of CEO Sociability on Brand Equity. Additionally, examine the influence of Sociability on the relational aspect between brand and consumer, as this outgoing leadership posture may engender those outcomes. Theoretical and empirical support is adopted to facilitate the comprehension around this topic. The exploratory aspect is reviewed in the use of qualitative and quantitative methods (8 interviews and 356 questionnaire respondents). Results showed that Sociability, captured by means of Credibility and Approachability, assumes to significantly influence Brand Equity and Consumer-Brand Relationship. Moreover, the latter also significantly influences Brand Equity. For Executives, their role in brand's value stems from their willingness to introduce this sociable leadership, as it benefits consumer's brand perception, where word-of-mouth builds brand positioning and sustainability.O contexto empresarial destaca-se pela necessidade de informação, onde os stakeholders consideram imperativo garantir a transparência e mútuo entendimento. Surge o pedido contante de a transparência e aproximação partir do contexto interno da marca, justificando a sua essência e humanizando o seu valor na comunidade. Certas marcas têm introduzido a intervenção contínua do seu Diretor Executivo, funcionando como embaixador da marca e personificador das características desta, partindo de uma comunicação ativa e elevada sociabilidade, que age na construção de relação e acréscimo no valor intangível e percebido por stakeholders, atribuindo o destaque a consumidores. A evidência destes casos contrasta com o desenvolvimento académico neste tema, assumindo uma estatura ainda embrionária e para a qual esta investigação procura construir entendimento. Esta dissertação procura salientar as ligações entre conceitos, explorando a influência da Sociabilidade do CEO em Brand Equity e na relação entre marca e consumidor, visto que esta postura humana e extrovertida poderá implicar esses resultados. Suporte teórico e empírico é adotado, desenvolvendo entendimento do tema e do caráter exploratório garantido pelos métodos quantitativos e qualitativos usados (8 entrevistas e 356 questionários preenchidos). Os resultados mostram que a Sociabilidade do CEO, expressada através de Proximidade e Credibilidade, influencia significativamente Brand Equity e a Relação entre marca e consumidor. Além disso, o aspeto relacional influencia significativamente Brand Equity. Para Executivos, o seu papel no valor da marca parte da vontade de o CEO introduzir este cenário sociável, visto que beneficia a perceção do consumidor, onde o word-of-mouth sedimenta o posicionamento da marca

The strategic use of The Face of Apartheid: examining Mondoweiss blog activists’ claims-making and protest activities over the Scarlett Johansson and SodaStream controversy

I rely upon the ideas of symbolic interaction generally and the social constructionist approach to social movements in particular to explore the ways in which blog activists strategically use celebrity to generate attention on behalf the BDS campaign against SodaStream and to communicate claims and grievances on behalf of the wider Palestinian movement. Using grounded theory and mix-methods, I employed a process-oriented approach to collect and analyze three types of data: 1. text, 2. images, and 3. data I created quantitatively from the qualitative data extracted from Mondoweiss blog articles published from January to March 2014. The study addressed 1. in what ways blog activists strategically use celebrity to draw attention to the wider Palestinian movement’s claims and grievances; and 2. how blog activists maintained enduring interest in campaign activities for mobilizing social action and social change over time. The study examined how the SodaStream announcement of the Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson as their Global Brand Ambassador, which blog activities immediately labeled her as The Face of Apartheid, was used as an opportunity to provoke a response from the celebrity and to contest the authenticity of her reputation as a humanitarian fighting to end poverty. I identify how blog activities strategically utilize Johansson in multiple ways to problematize her as a spectacle to communicate claims and to generate attention. Blog activists utilized her responses as a further opportunity to strategically use her celebrity to sustain interest by politicizing her humanitarian reputation. This was intended to motivate action as they attached their contestation over her humanitarian reputation to key external issues surrounding the BDS campaign against SodaStream; ultimately legitimizing The Face of Apartheid label, a celebrity who chose to be on the wrong side of history

The Influence of Brand Credibility towards Words of Mouth of Fashion Brand

This research tries to examine the factors influencing the positive word of mouth of Indonesian’s consumer towards fashion brand. The factors studied include brand credibility and brand-self connection as independent variables, brand-self connection and brand-social connection as the mediating variables, and memorial brand experience as the moderating variable. This study is quantitative research with data collection method using the electronic questionnaires of Google forms. This study uses 300 respondents of Prada Italian brand in Indonesia and the data is analyzed using structural equation modelling. The results show that brand credibility, brand self-connection, and brand social connection have a positive effect on word of mouth. Both brand self-connection and brand social connection mediate the influence of brand credibility on word of mouth. This study suggests that by preserving the relationships with consumers as well as consumer relationships with other consumers, managers would be able to produce more positive word of mouth

Communication plan for Samsung Galaxy A 2017 edition: how to communicate for millennials

The smartphone's market has been growing every year with increased innovations. This is a technological push driven market where products are created ahead the recognition of consumer needs. Smartphone development is based on consumers' possible future needs and so those companies with the best hunch in technologies and services of future will be the leaders in this industry. As the market has become more saturated, the consumer faces himself with a wide variety of offers, and so brands are struggling to differentiate among the others. Hereupon, the focus will be in developing an innovative Communication Plan for the new "Samsung Galaxy A 2017 edition". The main goal of this project is to increase product knowledge by creating an emotional link between the consumers and the brand and ultimately to drive sales. The literature review is based on academic articles concerning were the main subjects are: millennial generation and consumer buying behavior. It was conducted an external and internal analysis, to better understand the smartphone industry and "Samsung" brand as a company. Furthermore, the target was defined and studied to understand more deeply their connection, affinity and interaction with the smartphone brands. Finally, after defining the communications goals, a plan with specification, a budgeting and results was developed, by for each action.O mercado dos "smartphones" tem aumentado todos os anos com crescentes inovações. Este mercado é impulsionado por tecnologia, em que os produtos são criados antes que os consumidores os considerem uma necessidade. O desenvolvimento de smartphones baseia-se nas possíveis futuras necessidades dos consumidores e, portanto, as empresas que melhor projectam estas necessidades nas tecnologias e nos serviços do futuro serão os líderes da indústria. À medida que o mercado fica cada vez mais saturado, o consumidor depara-se com uma grande variedade de oferta e as marcas lutam para se diferenciar entre elas. Posto isto, o foco será o desenvolvimento de um Plano de Comunicação inovador para a nova edição de 2017 do "Samsung Galaxy A". O objetivo principal deste projeto é aumentar o conhecimento do produto criando um vínculo emocional entre os consumidores e a marca e, por fim, impulsionar as vendas. A revisão de literatura baseia-se em artigos académicos onde os temas principais são: geração "Millennials" e comportamento de compra do consumidor. Foi realizada uma análise externa e interna, para compreender melhor a indústria de "smartphones" e a "Samsung" como empresa. Além disso, foi definido e estudado o target de forma a compreender mais aprofundadamente a sua relação e interação com as marcas de "smartphones". Finalmente, depois de definir os objetivos de comunicação, foi desenvolvido um plano específico, orçamento e resultados para cada ação

The effects of celebrity endorsement on the consumers’ perceptions towards global brands

Brands are those lifestyles which consumers chose to buy in order to gain the value offered by the company, in order to be part of the community created through the brand equity elements and validated in the purchase of the products. Companies have understood how important it is to build a strong brand and many of them spend millions on aligning the brand with the design and style of the products, projecting the face and values of the company into the advertising campaigns. One of the most popular methods is through endorsement, placing a renounced celebrity and leveraging on the positive feedback of those customers that also follow the activities of the star whose face is on the cover of the marcom campaign. Celebrities have been used for a very long time to promote brands, sell products and services. Research has shown that those spokesmen of a brand who are more attractive can improve the statistics of recall and appeal more interest to the promotion campaign, as well as influence more on customer’s intention of buying the product (Kahle and Homer, 1985). The main purpose of this research is to investigate how celebrity endorsements influence the brand equity dimensions (brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality and brand associations) as well as stimulate consumers’ word-of-mouth through brand identification, growth in interest and the advertising memorability. The hypotheses were tested with the aid of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in the PLS (Partial Least Squares) software. The survey is comprised of a target group of 589 respondents, from three countries – Brazil, Moldova and Portugal. Results evidence that the Attitude towards the Celebrity influences different Brand Equity dimensions and affects brand identification, growth in advertisement interest and advertising memorability, generating positive word of mouth (or negative, depending on the type of advertisement and reputation). Based on these findings we suggest further investigation in this area with the possibility to gain more data about the different fields of marcom and the different types of CE which are more appropriate for the given type of business

The Business of the Girl: Celebrity and the Professionalization of Girlhood in Early Twenty-First Century Media Culture

The achieving “can-do” girl, who thrives in her personal, academic, and aspirational endeavors, emerged in response to self-help crisis literature of the 1990s urging mothers to manage their daughters’ low self-esteem. However, even as media industries have adopted the successful girl subject in popular film, television, and digital marketing campaigns, public conversations of tween and teenage girls still identify rising levels of anxiety and self-doubt that diminish girls’ confidence well into adulthood. Responding to what critics call the “confidence gap,” girl culture of the twenty-first century has organized itself around the affordances of social media and digital celebrity in the creation of a professionalized girl self-brand. This project addresses the media discourses of confidence and anxiety that shape expectations of girlhood achievement and examines the use of celebrity as a tool of professionalization in the reproduction of race and class hierarchies under neoliberal capitalism. This project explores four modes of cultural production that demonstrate what I call “the professional lifestyling of the self” that invoke the practice of celebrity and branding in the construction of the professional girl subjectivity: lifestyle media featuring mothers managing their daughters’ entertainment careers; girl prodigies and performers competing on reality talent shows; girl influencers building their business on YouTube and Instagram; and girl activists negotiating humanitarian agendas in networked microcelebrity spaces. Critical to each mode is how celebrity reinforces confidence, authenticity, and relatability in the creation of a professionalized girl subject who acts as a point of stabilization during uncertain economic times. The chapters survey the progression of girlhood in her professionalization, from her initial appointment as daughter carrying on the mother’s postfeminist legacy, to agent of social change navigating the pressures of promoting her cause in a commodity culture. Along the way, the girl learns to brand personal obstacles, insecurities, and anxieties as part of her authentic journey to professional achievement. I argue that this procession, as it operates within the surveillance framework of media convergence, reveals that attaining confidence is a commercial endeavor rather than a feminist one that promises social and economic independence while maintaining structural inequalities. This dissertation seeks to understand digital celebrity not just as “a pedagogical tool in the discursive production” of the girl, as P. David Marshall has argued, but as a professional aid in the construction of the gendered, racialized, and classed girl who can prosper in the shifting labor economy of the early twenty-first century. Girlhood relies on the technologies of branding and promotion to reimagine, rather than close, the confidence gap by assigning cultural value to traits like low self-worth that were previously blamed for holding girls back. This project ultimately interrogates how the commercial industries conceptualize the girl as a business whose confidence and anxiety are managed and whose work is crucial to the regulation of a capitalist society