Branding Activities Research Articles

Creating Brand Experiences Through Activational Sponsorship Leverage

A commonly accepted notion is that companies should leverage their event sponsorships with promotional and communication activities beyond the sponsorship contract. Activational sponsorship leverage is an experiential marketing strategy that encourages consumers to engage actively in brandrelated activities. The main purpose of this article is to investigate how level of consumer participation in brand-related activities at a sponsored event can improve brand evaluations by creating brand experiences. The article presents findings from a field quasiexperiment conducted at a sponsored sporting event, in which three levels of consumer participation with the sponsoring brand (active, passive, or no participation) were examined. Drawing on brand experience theory, the main prediction is that active participation represents the highest level of consumer brand engagement, and therefore should have the greatest potential for creating impactful brand experiences. The study provides valuable information for brand managers who seek to create memorable brand experiences through sponsorship-linked brand communication and activities.

What Grounds Our Loyalty towards “Authentic Brand Activism” of a Sustainable Food Brand?

“Authentic brand activism” is an under-researched area of study, and it suffers from a clear lack of understanding concerning the effectiveness of its practices. This study aims to assess how consumers’ evaluations of a brand regarding brand reputation, competence, credibility, and benevolence affect consumers’ brand trust and brand loyalty. This research focuses on the Italian brand “Libera Terra” (“Free Land”), an organisation that uses assets confiscated from the mafias for the production of environmentally and socially sustainable agri-food products. Based on a sample of 366 randomly chosen consumers in a supermarket in the urban district of Bologna (Italy), the results show that consumers’ perceptions of brand performance contribute to their perceived levels of brand trust. The brand trust subsequently impacts consumers’ brand loyalty. This research confirms that alignment between an organisation’s values, business practices, and marketing strategies ensures that authentic brand activism is effective, highlighting the need for businesses to consciously adopt brand activism and avoid “woke washing” practices. The theoretical and managerial implications arising from this research are also presented.

Comparative Phytochemical Investigations and in vitro Pharmacological Activities of Different Brands of Olive Oil

Comparative Phytochemical Investigations and in vitro Pharmacological Activities of Different Brands of Olive Oil

Why multi-disciplinary, cross-silo teams are best at analysing and actioning data collected along the customer journey

Enter 2021, 90 years since the famous McElroy ‘Brand Men’ memo also marked the start of the shift of ‘brand activities’ from advertising to full ownership of everything needed to produce business results: ‘Where brand development is heavy and where it is progressing, examine carefully the combination of effort that seems to be clicking and try to apply this same treatment to other territories that are comparable.’ The explosion of sales and marketing channels since has spawned a plethora of marketing specialisms and seen businesses come almost full circle, with marketing departments focusing solely on incremental growth and campaign ROI, sometimes at risk of losing control of core activities. The pandemic of the last two years has accelerated the growth and importance of digital media and sales channels – another typically siloed team – in how customers research, consider and buy. Change is not only taking place in more obvious consumer markets, but also in B2B, where both customers and suppliers have been forced to move more of sales and service processes online. This is delivering surprisingly positive outcomes in many cases, with McKinsey’s research showing that buyers and sellers alike prefer the new digital reality. As the need to connect ‘base nurturing’ activities (which tend to be owned by sales departments) and ‘growth activities’ (usually led by marketers) becomes clearer and as the digitalisation of both sale and marketing becomes more mainstream, we are seeing the re-birth of the ownership of ‘line of sight to results’ across functional silos. This is happening with the creation of roles such as Chief Growth Officer, Chief Customer Officer and new-style CMOs or CSOs who take a data-first approach and tend to look further than their own discipline along the entire value chain for the customer. This hybrid position bridges traditional departmental silos such as business development, sales, marketing, operations, customer support and information technology. While those organisations are striving to understand their customers’ omni-channel jouneys and add value all the way across this complex ecosystem of interactions, some historical models of analysis may no longer be able to cope with today’s cross-silo, omni-channel reality that requires end-to-end insights for many teams across the business. In this article we examine various useful, relevant, data science based approaches on which modern executives can rely to understand this new interconnected reality, allowing them to understand, nurture and grow their customer relationships, even in times of uncertainty and rapid change. We use examples of how traditionally marketing department-led activities such as customer segmentation and marketing investment analysis can evolve into a more cross-functional approach delivering better insights and, importantly, more value to the business.

The Fundraising Strategy of Fast Response Action or Aksi Cepat Tanggap (ACT) Labuhan Batu in Improving the Funds of Zakat, Infak, Sedekah(Alms) and Waqf

Aksi Cepat Tanggap (ACT) is a new institution in the Labuhanbatu region established to increase the funds of zakat, infaq, alms and waqf. This study used descriptive qualitative methods by using primary and secondary data sources. There are ten informants selected. They are interviewed to know the ACT strategy of fundraising. This study finds that Aksi Cepat Tanggap (ACT) Labuhanbatu's fundraising strategy in increasing the zakat, infaq, alms, and waqf funds is by identifying donors, using fundraising methods (direct and indirect fundraising), managing and maintaining donors, and monitoring and evaluating fundraising. In the first year of establishing the institution, ACT started its movement by expanding its indirect fundraising strategy to form a solid branding and positive image so that ACT Labuhanbatu could quickly adapt and build public trust. ACT already knew some definite donor targets with the previous year's branding activities, and the public was familiar with the institution's activities. This initiated ACT Labuhanbatu to upgrade its strategy by increasing direct fundraising and maximizing the maintenance activities of donors who often make their donations. In addition, ACT has conducted evaluations from both internal and external institutions so that Aksi Cepat Tanggap Labuhanbatu can increase the zakat, infaq, alms, and waqf funds in 2021.

Penciptaan Visual Branding Karjo (Kaose Wong Pordjo) Purworejo

Abstract. Karjo T-shirt merchandise has an appeal as a medium in promoting Purworejo through the visual themes of t-shirt designs that are presented. This creation is an offer for Karjo who is building brand awareness as a souvenir of Purworejo. Karjo tried to invite the people of Purworejo to be proud of the uniqueness of the city.Karjo's visual branding took advantage of the homecoming moment and gave memories to the travelers when there was a chance for a reunion, in the form of painting t-shirts for children and families under the name of the Karjo Makaryo event.This creation method uses design thinking method that begins with exploring the Karjo problem, then empathizes through social media Suwarto to the Karjo brand and conducts interviews. Based on observations, the ideas that will be processed into visual identity of Karjo Makaryo's activities will emerge and apply them to the publication media as a prototype of Karjo's branding which is expected to be carried out routinely.Relevance to Visual Communication Design Practice: Karjo Makaryo's visual identity became the beginning of a communication strategy as part of brand activation.

Digital Effect: Relationship between Brand Media Image and Company Performance

The primary trend of the ongoing digital transformation is the rapid socialization of the Internet. The crucial role in those processes is assigned to social networks. Integrating companies representing goods and services into social networks makes implementing a marketing strategy in a virtual environment urgent. Our literature review looked at the goals of a brand's social media presence and the expected benefits of that presence. Using a correlation-regression analysis, we have established the relationship between the media image of several global companies on social networks and the sales dynamics, value, and awareness of their brand. The hypotheses put forward were partially confirmed. However, the results showed no strong relationship between brand activity and brand audience in a social network and brand value and awareness. On the other hand, there wass a noticeable relationship between the size of the audience in a social network and the dynamics of the brand's revenue. Still, this influence turned out to be the opposite. Thus, the media image of a brand signifies the emergence of a kind of "digital effect" accompanied by concomitant phenomena of the relationship between the parameters of the audience size, revenue, value, and brand awareness. This constitutes the prospect of further research to clarify stable patterns.

The Web-based Application of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Product Distribution Management with Content Management System Shopify Integration in Netasia Singapore

Netasia is a brand activation of the company named Golden Style Management Lte. Ptd. in Singapore which acts as a local partner and distributor for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) from Indonesia. Netasia utilizes Content Management System (CMS) named Shopify to reach end-users. But currently, they do not have a platform for managing product distribution from preorders to vendors until distribution to stores. This research was conducted to develop a web-based application of SMEs product distribution management with CMS Shopify integration in Netasia Singapore. This research was conducted using Research and Development (RnD) method for research approaches and prototyping method for software development. The prototyping method often involves communication between developers and the company as application users, so that the application undergoes several changes. As the result of this research, the application has been successfully integrated with the data from the company's CMS Shopify through the API using cURL. The application was tested with several testing methods such as 1) black-box testing with 100% succeed percentage so the application is proper to use, 2) white-box testing with cyclomatic complexity of 4 and 100% succeed percentage for value test so the application passed the software engineering criteria, 3) User Acceptance Testing (UAT) with 94% average percentage so the application meets user expectations, and 4) browser application compatibility testing with the results that the application is compatible with all of the browser applications specified in this research for the menus function aspect, and less compatible with the Internet Explorer browser for the user interface aspect.

A Tale of Two “Ideologies”: Differences in Consumer Response to Brand Activism

Political ideology has been shown to influence consumer behavior across various domains such as recycling intentions, message appeals, brand attachment, and willingness to pay. In the marketplace, brand activism is becoming more common, with brands taking sides on a controversial sociopolitical issue. In a series of three studies, we examine whether consumers’ brand attitudes and willingness to pay for the brand is influenced by brand activism and whether this effect is moderated by consumers’ political ideology. Furthermore, we examine whether the issue type (pro-liberal vs. pro-conservative) and type of activism (authentic, absent, slacktivism) interact with political ideology to drive distinct consumer brand response. Importantly, we establish both affective as well as cognitive routes as potential drivers of these effects. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are also discussed.

Information Competition in Disruptive Media Markets: Investigating Competition and User Selection on Google

Due to digitization, traditional media brands are facing hypercompetition. For one thing, media outlets offering journalistic content no longer compete just with each other but also with all sorts of content from various sources, such as corporate publishers. This particularly applies to the information space provided by Google and other search engines. This leads to the question of how traditional media brands prevail in this information space: do traditional media brands have a competitive advantage because users perceive their journalistic content as more valuable in terms of credibility and reputation? Accordingly, this study investigates competition and user selection on Google. Drawing on a representative, experimental selection study of the German-speaking Swiss population (N = 1,100), search engine selection behavior was investigated. Results show that selection preferences do not differ between traditional media brands and other competitors, such as corporate publishers. This poses a major challenge for media brands. However, credibility and reputation significantly influence selection preferences. Thus, media managers should focus on effective branding activities in order to maintain a strong position in the digital information market.

Keeping up with the Boundaries of Advertising: Paradigm Repair after Pepsi's Big Mess

This paradigm repair study contributes to advertising ethics research by analyzing discourse from trade publications and press outlets regarding the divisive 2017 Kendall Jenner Pepsi advertisement. After the controversary surrounding the commercial ensued, actors within and outside the advertising industry argued the ad violated the ethical boundaries of the industry because it coopted a social issue, acted as a form of cultural appropriation, and served as an example of brand activism (gone awry). This study examines the reasons why this happened and concludes with an argument for paradigm repair's utility for studying advertising ethics, and with implications for advertising practice.

Sharing or Not: Psychological Motivations of Brand Rumors Spread and the Stop Solutions.

Brand rumors can harm brands’ image and bring significant impacts on customers’ decision-making and sharing behavior. Finding practical strategies for preventing the spread of brand rumors continues to be a challenge. Building on the social contagion theory, the current research enriches the discussion on understanding why people spread rumors and how to deal with the spreading of rumors. Sharing brand rumors is motivated by a variety of complex psychological reasons, but prior research didn’t adequately analyze the problem from a complexity perspective. Therefore, using a sample of 416 interviewers within eight types of brand rumors, this study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to investigate the combination of rumor psychological communication motivations in brand activities and solutions to prevent the spread of brand rumors. The current study discoveries three and two first-level configurational solutions, respectively, that can promote positive and negative rumor spreading. To summarize, emotional stimulation is a key component in the spread of rumors; altruism and relationship management motivation can coexist at times; and untrusted rumors are disseminated through other motivation factors. Solutions to prevent rumors from spreading are also provided. Furthermore, the findings help to understand the psychology of configurational motivation and how it can help brands reduce the spread of brand rumors. Finally, these discoveries’ theoretical contributions and practical implications are presented.

Brand activism on the digital public sphere: campaign content analysis of #BringBackOurBottle on Instagram

Brand activism is one of the organizational initiative practices voluntarily conducted to promote social, economic, environmental, and cultural issues which are considered as important matter and have wide impact for society aligned with the company’s vision and mission. Recently, this kind of activity mostly carried on social media as public sphere which becomes media communication, such as campaign to reduce plastic wastes conducted by The Body Shop Indonesia as effort to reduce environmental disaster and climate change impact. In this research, the researcher focused on the #BringBackOurBottle campaign carried by The Body Shop Indonesia by identifying messages through content visualization on Instagram account @thebodyshopindo.impact. Furthermore, the research used qualitative content for both photo and video post with hashtag #BringBackOurBottle. The research finding emphasized on two main messages within the content #BringBackOurBottle; the first, plastic threat for survival and the second is the drive for sustainable living. Besides, this research also showed that brands have power to create the consumer’s behaviour; it can encourage the consumers to participate in taking care of the environment through the program they continue to campaign.

Brand Activism: Impact of Woke Advertising on the Consumers’ Attitude and Brand Perceptions Towards Purchase Intention

As more and more consumers are becoming aware and interested in socio-political issues, brands are changing the way they advertise by communicating their stance on key issues on their advertising campaign; a strategy called woke advertising. Through this strategy, brands are taking up the responsibility of creating a lasting positive impact and meaningful contribution to society. However, instead of serving the desired purpose, some of these woke advertisements can backfire and generate negative responses. Thus, this study aims to analyze the impact of woke advertising on the consumers’ attitudes and brand perceptions towards their purchase intentions. The researchers conceptualized two (2) consumer concepts, namely 'passive woke consumers' and 'active woke consumers,' to further define what type of consumers they turn into. Moreover, the researchers conducted an experimental study to determine the changes in the behavior of the consumers before and after they see the woke advertisements. Three hundred eighty-five (385) participants from the National Capital Region were randomly selected based on the criteria developed by the researchers. Furthermore, paired t-test and descriptive analyses were utilized in analyzing the data. This study found out that woke advertisements enhance the overall consumer attitude and brand perception of Filipino consumers. However, they are not a major contributor in increasing their purchase intentions. It is then recommended for future researchers to consider studying other brands that did not have proper execution in addressing sensitive issues that caused negative feedback and controversy around the brand.

Developing a model for the Internal Brand Activation in service organizations from the perspective of Brand-based Human Resource Management (Case study of Bank Mellat)

Developing a model for the Internal Brand Activation in service organizations from the perspective of Brand-based Human Resource Management (Case study of Bank Mellat)

Marketing and new technologies: The use of NFT in promotional activities of brands - an overview

A blockchain-based unique digital identifier known as NFT is used to authenticate ownership of a particular digital asset and certain rights related to it. Although relatively new as a term, numbers in the NFT market show that this phenomenon is worth exploring. The aim of this paper was to define NFT and its application in the marketing activities of global brands. Although the importance of NFT is recognized in various industries, the focus of this paper was on examples related to the use of NFT in the marketing strategies of companies such as Cola-Cola, McDonald's, Pepsi and many other global brands. Additionally, the analysis of the promotional activities of NFT collections used in order of its popularisation and sales increase is presented.

The Role of an Actual Brand Positioning: An Analysis of Digital Advertisements

The purpose of this study was to: (a) investigate the actual positions in digital communications; (b) assess the relationship between position-congruity among intended positions (i.e., how a firm desires to be perceived by consumers), actual brand positions, and perceived brand positions (i.e., the perceptions that customers have in their minds); and (c) understand the role of actual positioning (AP) in the positioning process. Multiple methods (one-on-one and focus group interviews, content analysis) were applied to analyze positions. Brand managers, golf consumers, and digital advertisements in Golf Digest magazine were sampled. Content analysis, frequencies and percentages, percentage difference, and regression analysis were performed for all positions for each research brand. The results revealed that: (a) tangibility-based positions (88.5%: great quality, innovation) outnumbered intangibility-based ones (11.5%: tour performance, tradition) in digital AP, (b) there was no positive correlation between the degree of congruence between intended and AP and the degree of congruence between intended and perceived positioning, and (c) the AP mediated between intended and perceived positioning in the brand positioning model. The study provides empirical evidence for the mediating role of AP and suggests modifications to the previous positioning process.

Tuning machines: an approach to exploring how Instagram’s machine vision operates on and through digital media’s participatory visual cultures

ABSTRACT The work of training machine vision systems is diffused into the participatory cultures of social media. As we use social media platforms to express ourselves we assemble databases and train algorithms; and these algorithms in turn shape our everyday cultural practices. In this article, we describe a machine vision system that we built to undertake an unsupervised classification of 13,000 images posted to Instagram from Splendour in the Grass, a large Australian multi-day music festival with over 40,000 attendees featuring international musical acts and arts performances. We demonstrate how unsupervised approaches operate as open-ended queries, rather than definitive classifications. Once a machine vision system has ‘learned’ the unique numerical feature vector associated with an art object, brand activation or gendered pose, it can be used to search for other similar users and moments. We critically explore how the capacity of machines to cluster and classify these Instagram images is interdependent with the mediatized enclosures of popular cultural events and their participatory cultures, and hence represents continuities with the longer history of experience capitalism. Where unsupervised machine vision is used on an advertiser-funded platform like Instagram it points us to the prospective nature of digital advertising, driven not only by specified targeting of pre-labelled consumer preferences, but also by continuous pattern-mining and prediction, sometimes of patterns that seem impervious to symbolic labels. We argue for the importance of critical approaches that explore the open-ended and prospective interplay between culture and machine vision. We need to investigate the feedback loops between the design and use of our cultural spaces, the creativity of participants and users, and the development of platforms’ technologies and business models.

Sarcastic or Assertive: How Should Brands Reply to Consumers’ Uncivil Comments on Social Media in the Context of Brand Activism?

Brands are increasingly embracing social activism and adopting positions on controversial issues, prompting some consumers to react by making uncivil comments on social media. How should brands reply to such incivility while maintaining their positions and protecting their reputations? Two common types of reply include either a sarcastic or an assertive tone, but the effects of these types of communication on consumers’ attitudes toward brands remain largely unexplored. Results from a series of five studies exploring different causes (LGBT+ phobia, sexism, and racial equity) show that consumers evaluate brands that reply using an assertive tone more favorably than those using a sarcastic tone, which can be partially explained by the perceived aggressiveness of sarcasm. Additionally, support for a brand's stance acts as a boundary condition on the effect the type of reply adopted by the brand has on consumer attitudes toward the brand. So, the more someone supports a brand's stance, the less their perception of aggressiveness will negatively influence their attitude to that brand. We discuss the implications of these findings for marketing theory and practice.

BRANDING IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATARAM ANCIENT KINGDOM TOURISM VILLAGE IN PLERET KELURAHAN BANTUL, YOGYAKARTA SPECIAL REGION

The development of tourist villages is one of the efforts to improve the local community's economy. The development of the potential possessed by the village is one way out that can be offered. Pleret Village, which is located in Pleret District, Bantul Regency, Special Region of Yogyakarta, has various potentials that can be developed. Especially in the field of tourism. The development of tourism potential owned by Pleret is still in the development and revitalization stage. The tourism village branding activities carried out by the 2021 UNS KKN TIM include making profile videos, tourism village logos, and publications on social media. This branding activity is carried out to introduce or promote the potential of Pleret village, especially in the field of tourism to a wide audience. The more recognition of the potential possessed by the village of Pleret will later bring in domestic tourists and will increase the economic lift of the surrounding community who had been affected by the pandemic. Tourism village branding carried out by the 2021 UNS KKN TEAM in collaboration with various parties who participated in helping the smooth running of the program. The expected output is being able to raise the tourism potential of Pleret village, helping to increase MSMEs around tourist destinations, fiber being able to provide a new perspective where the digital world has a very effective and efficient role in various fields, especially in this case tourism village marketing.