User Generated Branding

In the digital world of the participatory web millions of common people have started publishing own brand related content. Such amateur pieces ignore official marketing campaigns and are generated by brand fans and opponents alike. Given the increasing speed and reach of the internet those grassroots messages may have sweeping effects on the brand image. This book represents a first comprehensive study fully dedicated to the emerging phenomenon of brand related user generated content. It explores its patterns and shows how brand managers may benefit from it via user generated branding campaigns.

The emergence of social media as one of the driving forces of consumers’ online experiences today also challenges our current understanding on marketing and brand management. The effects of brands’ social media involvement are to this day uncertain. Severin Dennhardt shows that social media and user-generated brands do have a strong influence on brands. Four independent studies demonstrate that first, successful brands can be created in virtual worlds, second, user-generated content drives the creation of unique brands, third social media strongly influences the social value perception of brands, and fourth, social media impacts consumers’ purchase decision process.

From a brand management perspective Ulrike Arnhold analyses the impact of interactive marketing programmes in Web 2.0, evaluating user generated content as a tool of the brand communication mix.

The knowledge on how to influence user engagement metrics and thereby brand visibility plays a crucial role in influencer branding – both for social media influencers as well as marketers. Based upon two holistic empirical models and the analysis of real-world data, Tanja Fink is able to show important drivers of user engagement in influencer branding. Therefore, the author is building upon established models from research in celebrity endorsement, product placement and social media marketing. The profound empirical results reveal surprising and highly relevant insights for brand managers which call for a more conscientious (visual) integration of brands in user-generated content (UGC) on Instagram. In addition, the author detects several mechanisms for increasing user engagement while preventing user reactance towards the brand endorsement.

Social media has redefined the way marketers communicate with their customers, giving consumers an advantage that they did not have previously. However, recent issues in online communication platforms have increased the challenges faced by marketers in developing and retaining their customers. Practitioners need to develop effective marketing communication programs that incorporate the meaningful forms of sociality into a customer-driven marketing program. Leveraging Computer-Mediated Marketing Environments discusses the nature of heightened interaction between marketers and consumers in the evolving technological environments, particularly on the central nature of online communities and other emerging technologies on dialogic engagement. Additionally, it aims to examine the relevant roles of online communities and emerging technologies in creating and retaining customers through effective dialogue management. Highlighting brand strategy, e-services, and web analytics, it is designed for marketers, brand managers, business managers, academicians, and students.

As media environments and communication practices evolve over time, so do theoretical concepts. This book analyzes some of the most well-known and fiercely discussed concepts of the digital age from a historical perspective, showing how many of them have pre-digital roots and how they have changed and still are constantly changing in the digital era. Written by leading authors in media and communication studies, the chapters historicize 16 concepts that have become central in the digital media literature, focusing on three main areas. The first part, Technologies and Connections, historicises concepts like network, media convergence, multimedia, interactivity and artificial intelligence. The second one is related to Agency and Politics and explores global governance, datafication, fake news, echo chambers, digital media activism. The last one, Users and Practices, is finally devoted to telepresence, digital loneliness, amateurism, user generated content, fandom and authenticity. The book aims to shed light on how concepts emerge and are co-shaped, circulated, used and reappropriated in different contexts. It argues for the need for a conceptual media and communication history that will reveal new developments without concealing continuities and it demonstrates how the analogue/digital dichotomy is often a misleading one.

Creativity is no longer the sole territory of the designer and other creative professionals. Amateurs are drawn to websites such as Flickr, Threadless, WordPress, YouTube, Etsy, and Lulu, approaching design with the expectation that they will fill in the content. Never has user-driven design been easier for the public to generate and distribute. How will such a fundamental shift toward bottom-up creation affect the design industry? Designing for Participatory Culture considers historical and contemporary models of making that provide ideas for harnessing user-generated content through participatory design. The authors discuss how designers can lead the new breed of widely distributed amateur creatives rather than be overrun by them. DPC challenges designers to transform audiences into users, and completed layouts into open-ended systems. The book opens with an introductory essay entitled 'Ceding Control,' which explores the general concept of participatory culture and the resulting emergence of systems-oriented models of co-creation. Four chapters Modularity, Flexibility, Community, and Technology explore the various approaches to participatory design through critical essays, case studies, and interviews with leading designers in the field.