Tybout, A. / Carpenter, G. (2001): Creating and Managing Brands In: Iacobucci, D. (ed.) (2001): Kellog on Marketing. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York

My question: Why does the image of the “one” universal customer not fit in the brand-model that is used by Tybout and Carpenter?

Answer: First of all the importance of the customer is very important if you speak about brands, whether they are national or global. The value of brands leads directly to the profits of the enterprise: “The power of brands with consumers translates directly into profits for those who own them” (p.75). The brands connect the company values and the customers: “In sum up, brands serve as a bridge between company and its customers – they are symbols of the value that the company creates” (p.101). But stressing this image there is not one bridge which guides the customer to the specific bunch of company values, but there are a wide range of bridges from different sides which offer the customer an possible approach to the product behind the brand. As Tybout and Carpenter stress in their article, there are three types of brands: the functional, image and experiential brands. Everyone has different qualities and needs special forms of advertisement and tools to maintain their brand quality. What also differs between these three types (the boundaries are blurring, so a functional brand can become a  experiential brand, as shown in  the case of Volvo) is the level of involvement of the customer. Functional brands are working with the factors of quality, price, place, service etc. which are nearly the same for every customer. If an image brand is created the involvement of the customer is needed, because if the customer doesn’t want to accept the underlying associations and images to connect them to the brand name, the brand only functions on the production level again. But the highest involvement of the customer is needed to create experiential brand, because without the participation of the customer the whole brand fails. So it comes not as a surprise, that the new medium of participation, the Internet fosters the creation and maintaining of brands such as the Star Trek experience (p.96). Tybout and Carpenter state: “Whatever the brand and product category, heavy users of it are likely to be more emotionally involved and, thereby view the brand as having more image or experiential characteristics than do light users of the brand” (p.97-98). So the brand is nothing stable, but something which differs related to the level of involvement of customers. So these fluid definition of brands is something closely related to a specific customer, not a general group or the ‘one’ customer.  

Dafermos, G. (2003): Blogging the Market: How Weblogs are Turning Corporate Machines into real Conversations (See: opensource.mit.edu/papers/dafermos3.pdf

My question: What does the mushroom growth of weblogs say about social developments in cyberspace?

Answer: The Internet is a space without real bodies and identities. Avatars and Nicknames offers less information about the real user you are communicating via Chat, ICQ, guestbooks etc. The development and success of personal weblogs seems to indicate that there is s kind of trend to personality. The customer reviews on Amazon.com, the discussed book-tips given by Andrew Sullivan on his weblog are given by real, existing people and not by an anonymous company or a pseudonym. That is what matters in the opinion of Dafermos: “[..] if weblogs have a true voice, they also have a chance of succeeding” (p.38). It seems to be that this development of weblogs (whether corporate or private) is the reaction on a great desire to create something like personality within this impersonal, anonymous space of the Internet. Dafermos stated this for the vase of corporate websites: “Weblogs are an attempt to break free from the dehumanised, conformant with corporate guidelines on how to address an audience PR speak”. So this seems to be one step in an development within the impersonal Internet. The first one was the use of Avatars and human-like guiding creatures, the second is the ‘personalization’ of the Internet through ‘true voices’ by real persons.

Nixon, Sean (2002): Re-imagining the ad-agency: the cultural connotations of economic forms In: du Gay, Paul commercial life, Sae Publications, / Pryke, Michael (ed.) (2002): Cultural economy: cultural analysis and London/Thousand Oaks/New Dehli, p.132-147

My question: Why is the small aspect of remuneration within the organisational structure of advertising industries so important for the whole argumentation of Nixon’s article?

Answer: Nixon sees the remuneration of financial arrangements within the advertisement industry as a key aspect, because it has a representing quality: “These financial arrangements – specifically forms of remuneration – are interesting because they have come to be seen by advertising industry insiders as carrying powerful meanings in themselves; meanings to do with the identity of advertising agencies as service providers” (p.134). They have a symbolic function for the client and play a “strategic role” (p.134) in the customer-client relation. How a company handles their remuneration arrangements represents so not only the organisational structure, but also the appreciation of the customer. As it is highlighted by Nixon, the form of remuneration defines the customer-agency relationship, which is an important factor in the advertisement market: “Competing models of remuneration were seen to carry powerful meanings about the nature of the client/agency relationship and so rethinking remuneration has itself been integral to the broader process of defining the ad agency” (p.145).