Branded Content Research Articles

ПРАГМАТИЧНИЙ ПОТЕНЦІАЛ НАТИВНОЇ РЕКЛАМИ: ФОРМИ, ТРЕНДИ (НА ПРИКЛАДІ НАТИВНОГО КОНТЕНТУ В СОЦІАЛЬНІЙ МЕРЕЖІ FACEBOOK ЩОДО БРЕНДА ФАКУЛЬТЕТУ ЖУРНАЛІСТИКИ ЗНУ)

<div><p><em>The article analyzes the peculiarities of the format of native advertising in the media space, its pragmatic potential (in particular, on the example of native content in the social network Facebook by the brand of the journalism department of ZNU), highlights the types and trends of native advertising. The following research methods were used to achieve the purpose of intelligence: descriptive (content content, including various examples), comparative (content presentation options) and typological (types, trends of native advertising, in particular, cross-media as an opportunity to submit content in different formats (video, audio, photos, text, infographics, etc.)), content analysis method using Internet services (using Popsters service). And the native code for analytics was the page of the journalism department of Zaporizhzhya National University on the social network Facebook. After all, the brand of the journalism department of Zaporozhye National University in 2019 celebrates its 15th anniversary. The brand vector is its value component and professional training with balanced distribution of theoretical and practical blocks (seven practices), student-centered (democratic interaction and high-level teacher-student dialogue) and integration into Ukrainian and world educational process (participation in grant programs).</em></p></div><p><em>And advertising on social networks is also a kind of native content, which does not appear in special blocks, and is organically inscribed on one page or another and unobtrusively offers, just remembering the product as if «to the word». Popsters service functionality, which evaluates an account (or linked accounts of one person) for 35 parameters, but the main three areas: reach or influence, or how many users evaluate, comment on the recording; true reach – the number of people affected; network score – an assessment of the audience’s response to the impact, or how far the network information diverges (how many share information on this page).</em></p><p><strong><em>Key words:</em></strong><em> nativeness, native advertising, branded content, special project, communication strategy.</em></p>

The impact of pronoun choices on consumer engagement actions: Exploring top global brands' social media communications

AbstractTo enhance the understanding of consumer engagement with brand content on social media, this study examines how pronoun choices affect different types of consumer engagement (e.g., likes, comments, shares) by simultaneously exploring five different pronoun types (first‐person singular, first‐person plural, second person, third‐person singular, and third‐person plural). Furthermore, this study explores how the effects of these linguistic (pronoun) choices vary across two brand classifications: characteristics (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and offerings (goods vs. services). The proposed multivariate Poisson regression model, analyzing 15,788 unique brand posts from Facebook over an 8‐month period, reveals differences in engagement due to pronoun usage across brand classifications. These results offer a deeper understanding of how the way brands talk to consumers on social media platforms influences consumers' attitudes (likes), propensity to engage with the brand (comments), and willingness to share branded content with their social networks (shares) across different brand classifications.

Équilibres et médiations dans la commandite de productions artistiques : intermédiation formelle ou informelle

Background This research aims to study partnerships between commercial brands and the cultural field. More specifically, it focuses on the process of agreement between marketing representatives and artists in the implementation of partnerships through sponsorship and branded content. Inspired mainly by the work done on cities by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot in On Justification: Economies of Worth, certain research questions can be identified: how do artists and communication or marketing professionals agree to create partnerships? How do these two worlds communicate and what arguments do they have to justify their association? Analysis The selected methodology proposes a survey based on comprehensive interviews in the context of two Quebec case studies: the sponsorship of an interactive work produced as part of a Montreal cultural festival and the production of a television program with branded content. Conclusions and implications The analysis reveals tensions existing between each partner that nevertheless are subject to different types of mediation between companies and artists which we propose to qualify as formal and informal mediation.

광고의 브랜디드 콘텐츠 사례분석 연구

광고의 브랜디드 콘텐츠 사례분석 연구

A typology of customer experience with social media branded content: a netnographic study

Drawing on consumer culture theory (CCT), this study explores the customer experiences with branded content posted on social media platforms. A netnography of the comments of the members of the Volvo Truck brand community was conducted to grasp the consumer expressions of experiences with the branded content. It was revealed that social media branded content experience typology comprises experiences such as self-identity, social bonding, aesthetic, utilitarian, humour, awe-inspiring, and discerning. The findings contribute to the research on customer experiences in social media and may help in designing the branded content which provides favourable experiences and fosters engagement in social media.

Strategic Brand Management in SMEs for Competitive Advantage

This study aimed to explore how SME owner-managers perceive their roles in marketing and brand management as a strategic approach to enhance their competitiveness to ensure profits, growth, and sustainability. For any organization to grow and thrive it is essential to become customers first choice and for that it is critical to communicate their brand content through effective and strategic brand management. Hence, adopting a qualitative, exploratory approach, 10 owner-managers of SMEs and entrepreneurs in Windhoek, Namibia, were interviewed using semi-structured in-depth interview protocol. Findings reflect that SME brand strategies both in modern and traditional aspects enhance company growth. The study also proposes a framework that is of practical significance for future entrepreneurs, SMEs and brand consultants to enable SMEs to create and develop their brands for better and competitive positioning in the markets. The unique contribution of this study is how SME-focused brand strategies can act as a driver and provide impetus to profits, growth, and sustainability.

Employee Advocacy as a Marketing Strategy to Power Brand Promotion: an Employee Perspective

Employee Advocacy is an emerging and cost-effective concept of employee amplification to market products and services by enabling employees to build and share the company's brand contents through social media platforms. The paper summarizes the available research-based contents as well as articles and blogs of experts in the field of digital and social media marketing. The study primarily intended to assess employees’ awareness and perception of various aspects of employee advocacy. It has identified forms and types of contents shared and social media platforms now used by the employees in the automotive sector for leveraging brand promotion and communicating with the target market. The study has been designed as a descriptive research paper based on the empirical data collected from a sample of 102 employees from automobile showrooms in the southern districts of Kerala using a snowball sampling technique. A questionnaire was drafted with the help of google forms and administered among the respondents via email and WhatsApp. Two-dimensional plot of correspondence analysis, Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, and Kruskal-Wallis H test was applied to present and describe the empirical data and to draw inference about the significance of the difference in the awareness and perception of employees about the aspects of employee advocacy on brand promotion in terms of demographic factors. Awareness level and understanding of the elements of employee advocacy is found very low and significantly different among employees according to the designation. This paper also indicates that the social media policies and guidelines of the companies were not rightly imparted to the employees. That’s why the involvement and creative use of the potentials of social media platforms by the employees were not up to a remarkable level. Employees perceived that employee advocacy as a cost-effective brand promotion strategy for the future, and it demands the employer’s motivation, recognition, and rewards for inspiring employees to be brand ambassadors. This research addressed a relatively new concept in which there has been no extensive empirical researches and calls on the attention of the market as well as academic researchers for contributing the unexplored areas of the novel and powerful idea for utilizing human resources in a platform where they are interested and involved. Keywords: content marketing, digital marketing, employee amplification, employee engagement, social media marketing.

The structure, content and context of achieved celebrity brands: a study of footballers in their brandscapes

Celebrity athletes are the most prominent achieved celebrity brands with well-noted effects in consumer behaviour. Still, current research is characterised by terminological polyglossia and conceptual overlaps, which results in a lack of clarity regarding the brand structure and content. Moreover, there is no consideration of the brandscape; the team or sports club the player belongs to or has most closely associated his name with. This paper addresses the current limitations by adopting an exploratory approach. Through qualitative research, namely five focus groups, we empirically investigated the celebrity footballer brand associations as they are being perceived by keen football fans. The data demonstrate that the celebrity footballer brand comprises two distinct components proposed by Keller (1993): 1) the professional one, to include product-related associations, further distinguished into individual, organisational and contextual associations; 2) the personal one, which corresponds to non-product-related associations and reflects the balance of a person's perceived virtues and vices. The role of the brandscape emerges as affecting his professional and personal associations both positively and negatively.

Users awareness of native advertising from Instagram media publishers: the effects of Instagram's branded content tool on attitudes and behavioural intent

The Federal Trade Commission stated that any kind of endorsement or promotion on Instagram should be clearly and conspicuously disclosed in order to avoid users' deceptions. Albeit the compulsoriness of this measure is still unclear, Instagram has introduced a branded content tool for paid sponsorship disclosure that clearly states the presence of a material connection between the brand and the publisher or influencer. With an online experiment we examine the effects of this disclosure on ad recognition and the resulting attitude toward the advertised brand, attitude toward the advertising publisher, publisher credibility and intention to spread electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Findings from a sample of 231 participants show that exposure to a post with advertising disclosure through the Instagram disclosure tool leads to higher ad recognition compared to a post with no disclosure. However, ad recognition negatively affects attitude toward the brand, publisher credibility and intention to spread eWOM.

A typology of customer experience with social media branded content: a netnographic study

A typology of customer experience with social media branded content: a netnographic study

Análisis bibliométrico de estudios sobre la estrategia de contenidos de marca en los medios sociales

Se analizan 106 estudios científicos, extraídos de Web of Science (WoS), sobre la estrategia de contenidos de marca en los medios sociales con el propósito de examinar el estado, la evolución y los diseños metodológicos del ámbito. Para ello se realiza un análisis bibliométrico cuantitativo y descriptivo. Los principales hallazgos son los indicios de madurez científica, como demuestran el predominio de estudios empíricos, la diversidad de actores, unidades de análisis y métodos de investigación, que facilitan nuevas vías de investigación en el área de la comunicación organizacional en entornos digitales.

Online brand communities’ contribution to digital business models

Purpose There is limited research examining social drivers and mediators of online brand community identification in the context of business models development. This study aims to identify them behind the social mechanisms and present essential factors which should be applied in business models to foster value co-creation. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from a convenience sample of 712 cases gathered among young European Facebook users via an electronic survey and analyzed using the structural equation modeling method. Findings Customer–other customers’ identification is a pivotal factor in influencing brand community identification. Practical implications If companies want to implement online brand communities into business models effectively and co-create brand value, they need deliver brand content useful for customer self-expression and social interaction to enhance consumer-brand identification and customer–customer social bonds which enable to transform the audience into a community. Focusing on the constant reinforcement of online brand community by supporting customer–customer relationships is critical for voluntary value co-creation. Originality/value The main contribution of this study to the literature on online brand communities is the presentation and empirical verification of pivotal social mechanisms of online brand community identification considered as a starting point to potential co-creation and capturing value based on the social presence theory.

The research content, characteristics and future trend of Chinese cultural brand——from the perspective of literature analysis

To create cultural brand is the internal need of enhancing the development of national cultural industry. We collected total of 1526 articles relevant to cultural band from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) to analyse the data with bibliometrics, social network analysis. We divided the cultural brand research into three stages basing on the changes in the number of papers published each year which has been increasing recently and compared each stage according to their characteristics. The results indicate that the overall cultural brand research, characterized by diversification, shows more decentralization in the content. There are more researches focusing on Chinese traditional culture and innovation development of cultural industry due to the urgent need of the development of Chinese cultural brand. In addition, some traditional fields, such as cultural industry and regional culture, always attract more attention in all stages, while the topics that reflect the development of the time can also be popular in certain stage.

“Do human values matter for promoting brands on social media? How social media users' values influence valuable brand‐related activities such as sharing, content creation, and reviews”

AbstractCompanies consider social media‐based consumer engagement behaviors such as sharing, content creation, and reviews for brands as more valuable than “liking” or consuming brand content. Studies show that branded content shared or created by consumers on social media may drive more brand awareness and loyalty than “likes” (Adweek, 2013). Global companies are increasingly focusing their efforts on motivating consumer‐driven content creation (e.g., Coca‐Cola #shareacoke and Apple #ShotoniPhone; Sprout Index, 2018). However, marketing practitioners are only recently beginning to understand social media audiences who engage in such activities (Adweek, 2018). This study posits that human values can be used to identify and segment audiences for social media‐based valuable brand activities. Three online surveys were conducted with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram users (ages 18–34) on Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 491). The relationship between social media users' values and their reported social media activities was examined. Findings indicate that the human values examined (conservation, self‐enhancement, openness to change and self‐transcendence) are significant drivers of valuable brand‐related social media activities. Companies should address conservation‐driven users in order to elicit brand sharing and creation activities. Companies should target conservation‐driven users for sharing promotions, self‐enhancement‐driven users for sharing informational content and writing of product reviews, and openness to change‐driven users for user‐generated content. Bussinesses should further highlight their corporate social responsibility efforts as a negative relationship is found between users' self‐transcendence values and brand activities. Recommendations are provided on how brandscan address users' values in their social media marketing to motivate sharing of branded content and content creation.

Message content features and social media engagement: evidence from the media industry

Purpose This paper aims to uncover the drivers of consumer-brand engagement on Facebook, understood here as users’ behavioral responses in the form of clicks, likes, shares and comments. We highlight which content components, interactivity cues (calls to action [CTA]) and media richness (e.g. video, photo and text) are most effective at inducing consumers to exhibit clicking, liking, commenting and sharing behaviors toward branded content. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzes 757 Facebook-based brand posts from a media and entertainment brand over a 15-week period. It investigates the relationship between interactive cues and media richness with consumer engagement using a negative binomial model. Findings Results show positive relationships for both interactivity cues and media richness content components on increasing consumer-brand engagement outcomes. The findings add clarity to previous inconsistent findings in the marketing literature. CTAs enhance all four engagement behaviors. Media richness also strongly influences all engagement behaviors, with visual imagery (photos and videos) attracting the most consumer responses. Research limitations/implications The sampled posts pertain to one brand (a radio station) and are thus concentrated within the media/entertainment industry, which limits the generalizability of findings. In addition, the authors limit their focus to Facebook but recognize that findings may differ across more visual or textual social networking sites. Practical implications The authors uncover the most effective pairings of media richness and interactivity components to trigger marketer-desired, behavioral responses. For sharing, for example, the authors show that photo-based posts are more effective on average than video-based posts. The authors also show that including an interactive call to act to encourage one type of engagement behavior has a near-universal effect in increasing all engagement behaviors. Originality/value This study takes two widely used concepts within the communications and advertising literatures – interactivity cues and media richness – and tests their relationship with engagement using real and actual users’ data available via Facebook Insights. This method is more robust than surveys or wall scrapping, as it mitigates Facebook’s algorithm effect. The results produce more consistent relationships than previous content marketing studies to date.

‘Branded content is dead: long live UGC’

La pregunta del millón de dólares está clara: ¿cómo debemos darle la vuelta a la comunicación digital? ¿Cómo una marca ha de reconducir la situación para volver a poner al consumidor en el centro?

Instagram fashionistas, luxury visual image strategies and vanity

PurposeLuxury fashion brands harness the power of Instagram and fashionistas for strategic brand management. This study aims to test interaction effects among luxury brand posts’ Instagram source type (brand versus fashionista), visual image type (product-centric versus consumer-centric) and consumers’ characteristics (vanity, opinion leadership and fashion consciousness) on brand recognition and trust.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative 2 (source type: brand versus fashionista) × 2 (branded visual image type: product-centric luxury versus consumer-centric luxury) between-subjects online experiment (N males = 195 and N females = 182) was conducted by recruiting participants from MTurk.FindingsLogistic regression analyses indicated two-way interaction effects between sources and visual images on brand recognition. Brand recognition was higher for product-centric images when the source was the fashionista, whereas brand recognition was equivalent regardless of the image type when the source was the brand. Logistic regression and multiple regression analyses revealed the moderating effects of sources and visual images on the association between consumer traits and branding outcomes.Practical implicationsMeticulously choosing effective methods of showcasing branded content and persuasive luxury visual image strategies via Instagram is more important for fashionistas than for established brands in increasing brand recognition. Instagram fashionistas are more effective in increasing females’ brand trust through delivering product-centric visual images when targeting women with high vanity, opinion leadership and fashion consciousness. Brands as the Instagram profile source are more persuasive in increasing males’ brand trust through delivering product-centric visual images when targeting men with high vanity.Originality/valueThis experiment provides theoretical discussions and empirical findings about social media influencer marketing and managerial implications for Instagram-based luxury branding. This research revolves around the overarching theme of the interactive effects of multifaceted branded contents and market segments in social media influencer marketing environments.

Exploring the role of visual aesthetics and presentation modality in luxury fashion brand communication on Instagram

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic importance of visual aesthetics and presentation modality for consumer responses to fashion luxury brand content posted on Instagram.Design/methodology/approachA content analysis of 40,679 posts on the official Instagram accounts of 15 global luxury brands was conducted.FindingsBrand posts using expressive aesthetic image received more likes and comments on Instagram than those with classical aesthetics. Brand video content received more likes and comments than static content. There was also a significant interaction between visual aesthetics and presentation modality in generating likes and comments. Brand content adopting expressive aesthetic and audio-visual modality generated more responses when using audio-visual modality, while content using classical aesthetics produced more responses in a visual-only format.Practical implicationsAs visual aesthetics and modality resulted in different responses to Instagram ads, luxury marketers should consider using appropriate approaches when creating brand posts on Instagram.Originality/valueThis is one of the few studies examining the effectiveness of visual aesthetics and presentation modality in Instagram advertising, especially in luxury fashion brand context.

Big name fandom and the (inevitable) failure of Disflix

Big name fans are those who have attained a level of recognition within a fan community without necessarily knowing each participant in the subculture and who have the power to influence how other fans in their community engage with the object of their shared fandom. Their niche celebrity status can be achieved through the range of knowledge, access, and official or exclusive information available to them, as well as the degree to which they produce their own media content. In the Disney fan community, big name fans are also sometimes known as lifestylers (lifestyle influencers), and their status is derived primarily from their social media celebrity. These fans document their frequent visits to the Disney parks and official Disney media events on social media, and they use their online platform to interact with their followers and share how they incorporate Disney into all aspects of their lives. Their microcelebrity status gives them power to shape and commodify what it means to be a Disney fan in the new media age through an emphasis on producing and sharing marketable personal brand content. This article seeks to understand the ways the influencer phenomenon has affected the Disney fan community and how this group of fans has shifted the practices, interactions, and habits associated with Disney fandom; it also addresses the limits of their impact among their peers.

Transformational effects of social media lurking practices on luxury consumption

Contemporary luxury brands have fully embraced social media as a quintessential channel for improving brand perceptions and developing customer relationships. However, what consumers actually do when engaging with luxury brands online has received limited attention to date. In this study, we theorize and investigate how the practices of lurking transform luxury consumption on visual social media. Specifically, we uncover four lurking practices related to luxury brand content on social media: compassing, curating, collecting, and conversing. On the one hand, these practices facilitate the de-materialization of luxury consumption by idealizing the properties of luxury brands; on the other hand, they re-materialize luxury consumption into new digital virtual actualizations. Taken together, lurking has a transformational effect on luxury consumption as evident in the ways lurkers consume intangible luxuries on visual social media. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications arising from these findings.