TY - JOUR
T1 - The activist brand and the transformational power of resistance
T2 - towards a narrative conceptual framework
AU - Andersen, Sophie Esmann
AU - Johansen, Trine Susanne
PY - 2024/3
Y1 - 2024/3
N2 - Brand activism has become a popular term for describing how brands are becoming involved with controversial sociopolitical issues. The activist brand is thus characterised by its engagement with controversy and understood in and through macro-level cultural oppositions which it continuously orbits and positions itself against. The purpose of this paper is to contribute with a conceptual gaze at the activist brand's inherent controversy that enables an understanding of the online micro-level dynamics and processes that transform the online activist brand. Drawing on a narrative approach, the paper develops an ante- and counternarrative framework to explain how these complex micro-level dynamics and processes of resistance transform the brand. The framework allows us to approach the activist brand as the result of a complex network of antenarratives and counternarratives, which the brand flows in and out of, retells, supports, and resists.
AB - Brand activism has become a popular term for describing how brands are becoming involved with controversial sociopolitical issues. The activist brand is thus characterised by its engagement with controversy and understood in and through macro-level cultural oppositions which it continuously orbits and positions itself against. The purpose of this paper is to contribute with a conceptual gaze at the activist brand's inherent controversy that enables an understanding of the online micro-level dynamics and processes that transform the online activist brand. Drawing on a narrative approach, the paper develops an ante- and counternarrative framework to explain how these complex micro-level dynamics and processes of resistance transform the brand. The framework allows us to approach the activist brand as the result of a complex network of antenarratives and counternarratives, which the brand flows in and out of, retells, supports, and resists.
KW - Activist brand
KW - Antenarrative
KW - Counternarrative
KW - Cultural brand
KW - Micro-level
KW - Narrative
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85151554576&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1057/s41262-023-00320-1
DO - 10.1057/s41262-023-00320-1
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1350-231X
VL - 31
SP - 140
EP - 152
JO - Journal of Brand Management
JF - Journal of Brand Management
IS - 2
ER -