Brand Society: How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle

by Martin Kornberger

Overview

Brands are a fait accompli: they represent a mountain range of evidence in search of a theory. They are much exploited, but little explored. In this book, Martin Kornberger sets out to rectify the ratio between exploiting and exploring through sketching out a theory of the Brand Society. Most attempts to explain the role of brands focus on brands either as marketing and management tools (business perspective) or a symptoms of consumerism (sociological perspective). Brand Society combines these perspectives to show how brands have the power to transform both the organizations that develop them and the lifestyles of the individuals who consume them. This holistic approach shows how brands function as a medium between producers and consumers in a way that is rapidly transforming our economy and society. That's the bottom line of the Brand Society: brands are a new way of organizing production and managing consumption. Using an array of practical case studies from a diverse set of organizations, this book provides a fascinating account of the way in which brands influence the lives of individuals and the organizations they work in.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521726900
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/21/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Martin Kornberger holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor in the School of Management and the School of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is also a visiting lecturer in marketing at the University of St Andrews and co-founder of the branding agency PLAY, where he was co-director from 2003 until 2008. He is co-author, with Stewart Clegg and Tyrone Pitsis, of the management textbook Managing and Organizations, 2nd edition (2008).

Table of Contents

List of figures x

Preface xi

Acknowledgements xvii

Part I Brands and branding 1

1 Introduction: the brand society 3

2 Making sense of brands 24

3 The making of brands 49

Part II How brands transform management 85

4 Identity 87

5 Culture 115

6 Innovation 147

Part III How brands transform lifestyle 173

7 Politics 175

8 Ethics 205

9 Aesthetics 236

Conclusion 263

References 273

Index 292

Editorial Reviews

An intelligent, well-informed book from someone who understands that brands and branding are intrinsic to the human condition and didn’t float over to Europe from the United States on a sea of Procter & Gamble detergent bubbles sometime in the 1960s…[Kornberger] also puts branding in the centre of management. This is the real strength of the book – to understand where branding comes from and place it into a contemporary corporate context…Kornberger is a clever, cultivated man who writes well. What else can you reasonably ask for?”
—Wally Olins, Market Leader

From the Publisher