Branding Culture

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Joumal of Marketing Management 2005, 21, 573-588 Daragh O'Reilly^ Cultural Brands/ Branding Cultures This conceptual paper examines the interface between culture and business, with specific reference to branding, it argues that, while considerable strides have been made in recent years to develop Arts Marketing theory, the subject now needs to take account of wider social and cultural issues. Vw paper explores the way in which processes of meaning- making have been theorised in consumption and cultural studies, it argues for a view of the symbolic dimensions of branding practices that positions them within the circuit of culture, as a cultural phenomenon, it is argued that brands are symbolic articulators of production and consumption, in this Leeds University Business ^^^^^^ ^n i^^ands are representational texts, and are School socially, not merely managerially, constructed. Different kinds of cultural brands are identified, including cultrepreneurs, cultural corporates and commercial corporates, and their practices in relation to business and culture are discussed, it is suggested that marketing (including branding) is not a neutral analytical repertoire for the study of exchange relationships, but is itself a particular kind of cultural brand, namely an ideological myopia which operates in the service of capital. It is suggested tlmt Arts Marketing practitioners and scholars consider tlwse wider issues in formulating their marketing practices and research strategies. Keywords: Arts Marketing, Culture, Branding, Social Construction, Marketing Myopia Introduction Recent writing in the field of arts marketing (e.g. Hill, O'Sullivan and O'Sullivan 2003) has consolidated the application of classical marketing principles to this area, and begun to develop new directions of enquiry and 1 Correspondence: Daragh O'Reilly, Lecturer in Marketing, Leeds University Business School, Maurice Keyworth Building, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom, Tel.: +44113 34 34 534, e-mail: [email protected] ISSN0267-257X/2005/5-6/00573 + 15 £8.00/0 ©Westbum Publishers Ltd.

Transcript of Branding Culture

Page 1: Branding Culture

Joumal of Marketing Management 2005, 21, 573-588

Daragh O'Reilly^ Cultural Brands/ Branding Cultures

This conceptual paper examines the interface betweenculture and business, with specific reference tobranding, it argues that, while considerable strideshave been made in recent years to develop ArtsMarketing theory, the subject now needs to takeaccount of wider social and cultural issues. Vw paperexplores the way in which processes of meaning-making have been theorised in consumption andcultural studies, it argues for a view of the symbolicdimensions of branding practices that positions themwithin the circuit of culture, as a culturalphenomenon, it is argued that brands are symbolicarticulators of production and consumption, in this

Leeds University Business ^^^^^^ ^n i^^ands are representational texts, and areSchool socially, not merely managerially, constructed.

Different kinds of cultural brands are identified,including cultrepreneurs, cultural corporates andcommercial corporates, and their practices in relationto business and culture are discussed, it is suggestedthat marketing (including branding) is not a neutralanalytical repertoire for the study of exchangerelationships, but is itself a particular kind of culturalbrand, namely an ideological myopia which operates inthe service of capital. It is suggested tlmt ArtsMarketing practitioners and scholars consider tlwsewider issues in formulating their marketing practicesand research strategies.

Keywords: Arts Marketing, Culture, Branding, Social Construction,Marketing Myopia

Introduction

Recent writing in the field of arts marketing (e.g. Hill, O'Sullivan andO'Sullivan 2003) has consolidated the application of classical marketingprinciples to this area, and begun to develop new directions of enquiry and

1 Correspondence: Daragh O'Reilly, Lecturer in Marketing, Leeds University BusinessSchool, Maurice Keyworth Building, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UnitedKingdom, Tel.: +44113 34 34 534, e-mail: [email protected]

ISSN0267-257X/2005/5-6/00573 + 15 £8.00/0 ©Westbum Publishers Ltd.

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conceptualisation (Kerrigan, Fraser and Ozbilgin (eds.) 2004). This paperaims to contribute to these developments by opening up other perspectiveson the wider relationship between business and culture. It attempts toanalyse the saturation of culture by commerce by looking at meaning-makingprocesses in society.

At the beginning of the 21st century, everything is for sale, everything is abrand, and brands are the culture (Klein 2000). Celebrities and stars can comefrom the more traditional areas of arts-cultural activity such as opera, themedia, fine arts, film, fashion, rock music, and theatre, but also from areassuch as politics, sports, education, religion, and science, as well as from thehouse next door. In the contemporary economy, there are many examples.Punk-chef Jamie Oliver sells fresh produce (and a construction of 'family')for Sainsbury's; Vinnie Jones, ex-footballer and film actor, sells alcohol forBacardi; Harry Potter sells breakfast cereals for Kellogg's; Tony Blair sells'cool' for Britain; the English National Ballet puts Barbie in the NutcrackerSuite; Edvard Munch's 'Scream' is used to brand pubs, and, like PabloPicasso's signature, helps to sell cars; luwies and playwrights sign up topromote political parties and ideas at election time; Bernie Ecclestone'sponsors' New Labour; the Osboumes commodify their family life ontelevision; Jade becomes a brand on Big Brother; easyjet parades its customer'service' encounters in a weekly docusoap; and arch alco-capitalists, Diageo,via their Guirmess brand, continue to appropriate as many aspects of Irish,Cuban, surfing and sporting culture as the brand will stretch to. In short,there is an emerging commonality about how different kinds of culturalmearung in all of these sectors are being manufactured, sold to, andexperienced by, consumers and citizens. Yes, it seems, in this culturo-economic merry-go-round one can package and sell the President of theUnited States and cornflakes in a similar fashion.

Arts Marketing

In this wider context, arts marketing can be seen as being too narrowlyfocused on the marketing of arts and heritage offerings rather than of widerissues of business and culture. Much arts marketing literature has to do withmarketing management issues, and audience development. From asociological point of view, arts marketing falls within the sociology ofcultijre, and its offshoot the sociology of the arts (Alexander 2003; Tanner(ed.) 2003; Wolff 1993). A key thinker in this area is Bourdieu (e.g. 1993),whose work has to do, among other things, with the production, circulationand consumption of symbolic goods. According to Bourdieu, agents in thecultural field are endowed with a certain habitus, a 'feel for the game'. Eachof them, producer and consumer, has a strategy, conscious or unconscious, to

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accumulate cultural and symbolic capital as a source of power. Art andcultural consumption are used in this way to legitimate social differences.Bourdieu's work is influential, but its research approach and adherence tothe notion of class have been increasingly criticised. Cultural sociology'sdefinition (e.g. Spillman (ed.) 2002) of culture, on the other hand, sees cultureas a set of social meaning-making processes. There are three key analyticalfocuses in this discipline: the idea that social actors use cultural repertoires toconstruct strategies of action; culture as a social product situated withinproducer networks; and the removal of cultural repertoires, texts and objectsfrom their context for separate analysis. This approach to sociology offersarts marketing scholars a range of appropriate directions for enquiry. It alsochallenges the narrow focus of arts marketing on the promotion of culturalofferings.

Arts marketing has a rather conventional approach to branding, to theextent that it has considered the matter much at all. Over the past few years,the International Journal of Arts Management does not appear to have hadany articles with the word 'brand' in the title/abstract citations. Brands andbranding rate a few mentions amongst, for example, Bj6rkegren (1996),Colbert (2000), Kolb 2000), Caves (2000), Heilbrun and Gray (2001), Throsby(2001), Hesmondhalgh (2002), Hill, Hill and O'Sullivan (2003), and Guillet deMonthoux (2004). A very recent exception to this is Schroeder (forthcoming),who discusses branding in the context of the production and consumption ofartistic images and offers a number of artist case studies to explore therelationship between branding, consumption and art.

The more general silence on branding and art, however, is surprising in sofar as brands are symbolic resources and constructs (see below), andarguably an important part of everyday contemporary culture, whether theybe commercial or artistic. They are important vehicles for making andcirculating meanings in society. Artistic brands in particular have arguably alot to teach commercial brand engineers. , ..

Consumption and Meaning-Making

McCracken (1990), widely cited in the consumer literature, offered a view ofhow meaning is manufactured and moved in the world of goods. He pointedout that a significant lack in the study of the cultural meaning of goods is the'failure to observe that this meaning is constantly in transit' (op. cit., p.71).His movement of meaning model (Figure 1) posited that there were threelocations of meaning, namely, within the culturally constituted world, withinthe consumer good, and within the individual consumer. In addition, therewere two trajectories: 'world-to-good and good to individual' (p. 72).

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Culturally Constituted World

Advertising/FashionSystem

FasfiionSystem

Consumer Goods

PossessionRitual

ExchangeRitual

GroomingRitual

DivestmentRitual

Individual Consumer

Location of Meaning

Instrument of Meaning Transfer

Source: McCracken 1990:72

Figure 1. McCracken's Movement of Meaning Model

According to McCracken, advertising brings the good and a representation ofthis world together within the frame of an advertisement. The fashion systemtakes 'new styles of clothing ... and associates them with estabhshed culturalcategories ...'. Advertising and fashion are the instruments for movingmeaning from the culturally constituted world to the good. There are thenfour instruments for moving mearung from the product into the consumer'slife. He sees these as symbolic actions or rituals, a kind of social actiondevoted to the manipulation of the cultural meaning for purposes ofcollective and individual commurucation and categorisation, a way of'moving meaning out of the goods and into their lives' (p.85). These fourrituals, or symbolic actions are exchange, possession, grooming anddivestment.

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Although the actual visual model offers a helpful conceptualisation of thedouble movement of meaning transfer, and McCracken's work has beenseminal in consumer research into culture and consumption, as time haspassed it has become clear that there are a number of issues in the modelwhich need addressing. The graphic representation/model does notexplicitly take account of issues of representation, which is surprising in thatits central theme is meaning. Secondly, advertising and fashion systems areby no means the only ways in which meanings are encoded into goods. Also,the model uses a transmission metaphor, which is a rather outmoded modelof communication. For example, Adler and Rodman point out (2003:14) theadvantages of using a transactional model. Fourthly, the focus in the actualmodel on the consumption side is on the individual consumer, and not alsoon groups of consumers, or the interaction of the individual with otherconsumers - contrast Elliott and Wattansuwan (1998) who discuss theinternai-extemal dialectic of personal and social identity. Fifthly, while theindividual consumer is shown, the individual producer is kept out of thepicture. Sixthly, there is no feedback loop from the consumer to the producer.Also, the notion of the culturally constituted world is essentially a cognitiveview of culture, rather than of culture as a social meaning-making process(Spillman 2002). Finally, the model does not address the performativefunction of discourse.

Cultural Studies and Meaning-Making

In this section, consideration is given to two models from cultural studieswhich to a greater or lesser degree attempt to capture meaning-makingprocesses in relation to cultural products and to products in general, namely,the cultural diamond (Alexander 2003) and the circuit of culture (Du Gay etal. 1997). Since these models are not well known in the marketing literature, asomewhat detailed presentation is required, particularly of the circuit ofculture.

The Cultural DiamondThe cultural diamond was first developed by Griswold (1994) and then

modified by Alexander (2003) to include cultural distributors - see Figure 2below.

The principle is that 'to understand art and society, researchers must takeaccount of all four corners and all six links in the diamond.

The problem with this model is that it does not cover issues ofrepresentation. This seems to substantiate the criticism regarding sociologyof culture's failure to make the linguistic tum. If we are to build anintegrative framework for thinking about the production and consumption of

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cultural/symbolic products, there needs to be a specific element which dealswith the process of representation.

Art

Creators Consumers

Society

Soiu-ce: Alexander (2003)

Figure 2. The Modified Cultural Diamond

The Circuit of CultureIn their monographic case study of the Sony Walkman, du Gay et al.

(1997) and in later developments of this idea (Du Gay (ed.) 1997; Hall 1997;Du Gay, Evans and Redman (eds.) 2000) introduce a new model for cultureas the production and circulation of meaning - not just in artistic products,but in products in general. This is a model whose central elements date backto at least the early 1980s (Barker 2000:28). According to Barker (op. cit.,p.78), 'the advantage of the circuit of culture metaphor is that it allows us toanalyse the specifics of any given level of a social formation, for exampleculture'. The following presentation depends heavily on Du Gay et al.'s text(1997) for its formulation and the debt to these writers is acknowledged.

The Walkman study was the case study of a biography of a culturalaretefact in terms of a theoretical model based on the articulation of anumber of distinct processes (1997, p. 3). The five processes of production,consumption, representation, regulation and identity form the circuit ofculture (Figure 3). A full cultural analysis of a cultural artefact requiresattention to be paid to each of these processes. This goes beyond the culturaldiamond by introducing representation, identity and regulation as keycomponents of the model. The authors point out that (p. 10) meaning is notsent from one stage e.g. production to consumption, as in a transmissionmodel, it is 'more like the model of a dialogue'.

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Source: Du Gay et al. (1997)

Figure 3. The Circuit of Culture

For the purposes of this discussion, we are interested in four of thesemoments or processses, namely all except regulation.

Production and Consumption '

Du Gay et al. (1997) see production and consumption not as separate spheresof existence (p. 103) but rather as mutually constitutive. During production,the encoding of meanings into products takes place, e.g. through productdesign activities. Every site or organisation engaged in the production ofculture has a culture of production which is 'an integral part of the companyway of life that informs intra-organizational decisions and activities' (such asstaff recruitment policies, departmental organizational arrangements andgeneral management strategies). But it also informs the perceptions ofoutside observers (p.43). Consumption is where meanings are made, inactual social usage. The authors trace different approaches to consumption.Firstly, the Frankfurt school's 'production of consumption' approach seesconsumption as being determined by production; there is no agency on thedemand side; mass consumption is the pursuit of cultural dupes. Othersargue that consumption has identity value as well as use or exchange value(p. 91). Consumption can be used as a marker of social and cultural

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difference. This goes back to Veblen's theory of the leisure class (1899). It isalso an idea promoted by Bourdieu, who held that taste for cultural goodsfunctions as a marker for social class (p. 97). Finally, there are those who seeconsumption in term of appropriation and resistance. Firstly, subculturalanalysts like Hebdige (1979) saw consumers as using commodities to signifyan identity for themselves which was in opposition to the perceiveddominant culture. From this perspective, consumption is an active process,and consumers can put producers' signifiers to other uses as they arepolysemic. Again, De Certeau argued that meaning is produced byconsumers through the use to which they put objects in their everyday lives(consumption as production). This relates to Elliott and Wattanasuwan'sproposition (1998) that consumers use brands as resources to construct partsof their identities. This view sees social subjects as active agents who play acrucial role in creating their own identities through consumption. This,however, does not deal with the question of where the sources of power lie incultural exchanges and who owns them.

Identity

Marketers, designers, and advertising executives are seen as persons ofsymbolic expertise used to articulate, i.e. link, production and consumptionthrough signifiying practices such as constructing ideal identities or subjectpositions for consumers or prospects to occupy or negotiate. Within culturalstudies, the notion of identity has been heavily problematised. As Hall (1997)points out, there has been a 'veritable discursive explosion in recent yearsaround the concept of identity'. Psychologists of various denominations,sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, cultural studies specialists,feminists, Marxists and many other '-ists' have all expressed a point of viewon what identity means. For Hall, the cumulative effect of Marxism,psychoanalysis, feminism, theories of language and the work of Foucault isto deconstruct the essentialist notion of the unified agent who possesses afixed identity as a referent for the pronoun 'I'. Instead, anti-essentialistconceptioros of identity within cultural studies stress the decentred subject,the self as made up of multiple and changeable identities.

Barker (2000) says that according to the anti-essentialist way of thinking:

identities are not things which exist; they Imve no essential or universal qualities.Rather they are discursive constructions, the product of discourse or regulatedways of speaking about the world, in other words, identities are constituted, maderather than found, by representations, notably language.

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Representation and Text

Representation is the practice of constructing meaning through the use ofsigns and language (Hall and du Gay:24). Language has always been centralto culture. It is the medium through which we make and share meanings,and 'has always been regarded as the key repository of cultural values andmeanings'. Language operates as a representational system. Meaning isconstantly being produced and exchanged in every personal and socialinteraction in which we take part. Since the cultural turn in human and socialsciences, meaning is thought to be produced - constructed - rather thansimply 'found' - p. 5.

The construct which enables us to analyse the representational momentsof the circuit of culture is the notion of text. The idea that everything can beread as 'text' is found in communications, folklore, literature, popular music,performance studies and other disciplines. Many scholars, from differentconstituencies, in line with the language turn in the humanities and socialscience, define the term widely, for example. Barker (2000), a culturalist,defines text as:

all practices which signify. Viis includes the generation of meaning throughimages, sounds, objects (such as clothes) and activities (like dance and sport).Since images, sounds, objects and practices are sign systems, which signify withtlw same mechanism as a language, we may refer to them as cultural texts.

Shuker, a popular music specialist, (2001:14) places the notion of text firmlyinto a social context:

The 'meaning' of any engagement betioeen a text and its consumers cannot beassumed, or 'read off from textual characteristics alone. Vie text's historicalconditions of production and consumption are important as is the nature of itsaudience, and the various ways in which they mediate their encounter with thetext.

All texts are constructed and construed in a specific historical context. Alltexts are performed, just as all performance is text. Marketing and consumerresearchers have also adopted the text trope. Apart from characterisingproducts as texts for analysis, scholars of the interpretive or postmodernpersuasion have characterised consumption itself as a text or indeed see theentire field of research as a text - see e.g. Hirschman and Holbrook (1992).

Brands as Texts

Textbooks on branding (e.g. de Chernatony and McDonald 1998, p. 36)assign different meanings to the concept of a brand, conceptualising it as, for

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example, a symbolic device or as a strategic asset which produces revenueand profit streams. From a Culturalist, symbolic point of view, brands can beread as cultural texts which are culturally produced and consumed, and assymbolic articulators of production and consumption. These texts representor construct identities for their referents, be these organisations, people,places, or products. Brands are socially constructed texts which mediatemeanings between and amongst consumers and producers. A brand is a 'signfor sale' (Levy 1959). Brand-texts aim to mark the difference between theirowners' and others' commercial identities. It matters, for example, to Sonythat a consumer can favourably differentiate its brand from others;otherwise, its retum on capital is threatened. All brand texts areperformative, be they salesperson's representations, staff behaviour in aservice encounter, an interview with the company president, or a marketingcommunications campaign. In these ways, all brands are cultural brands.

To say that brands are managerially constructed, and built by managersonly, is to deny consumers a role in the making of their meanings; to disagreewith the proposition that production and consumption are, culturallyspeaking, mutually constitutive; to exscribe consumers from brand histories;to silence their voices; and to ascribe sole 'brand-building' rights to corporateand ad agency executives already privileged by their access to commercial,technological and media power. If we are to resist such managerialistblinding, it is important always to keep in mind the dialogic character ofbranded communications, and to assert that all brands are sociallyconstructed. There is no question of a brand having an 'essence'. Brands donot exist, however much they may be reified in managerialist texts; they haveno essential qualities. Far from being essential, brand identities areprovisional, to be constructed and negotiated in the context of socialinteraction.

Maines (2000) argues that 'the entire field of sociology has been a socialconstructionist one for most of the twentieth century'. An explicitly socialconstructionist approach is, however, only slowly finding its way intomarketing (see Hackley 1998; 2001).

Cultural Brands/Branding Cultures

All brands cire cultural, but there are different senses in which one can talkabout 'cultural brands'. For the purposes of discussion in this paper, adistinction is made between different types of cultural brands. These are (i)cultrepreneurs; (ii) commercial corporates; and (iii) cultural corporates. Thepurpose of this categorisation is to identify and distinguish between,respectively, artists who act like businesspeople, mainstream commercialbusinesses and their relationship to culture, and finally cultural organisations

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which are increasingly behaving like businesses in the ways in which theyrespond to their operating envirorunent. The increasingly business-likebehaviour of cultural agents and the increasing use of culture by businessesare two separate aspects of the increasing connection between business andculture.

Cultrepreneurs are, for example, those UK artistes such as Emin, Hirst, theChapman Brothers or, in US popular music, Marilyn Manson or Madonna,who have adopted strategies of intensive media management in order topromote themselves as cultural or art brands and thereby their owncommercial success. Such activity is often associated with socialtransgression and the strategic use of shock and outrageous identities andinnovations, because media attention is predictably oriented responsive suchbehaviour. These brands, unlike corporate commercial brands below, exploittheir freedom to shock, a luxury the commercial brands cannot affordbecause it might upset the stockholders or the customers. Arguably this typeof cultural brand finds it roots in a combination of Duchamp and Warhol,two icons of twentieth-century art marketing. Duchamp questioned howvalue was ascribed to certain kinds of art, and logically this has led to theproduction of art of questionable value. Warhol, with his emphasis on self-promotion and fame, has helped to lay the basis for the artist as celebrity.This combination of questionable product quality and intensive self-promotion is a strategy well understood by marketers.

The second group of cultural brands, the commercial corporates, are ofcourse the mainstream commercial organisations, including the globalmultinationals. What has become increasingly clear to analysts is the degreeto which these organisations appropriate culture and art-cultural offerings tobuild their brands. The mechanisms for this cultural engineering includeadvertising, co-branding, celebrity endorsement, product placement,merchandising, sponsorship, cause-related marketing, merchandising, andcultural franchising. Through the embedding of marketing communicationsmessages into film, television, street-level and ambient media, thesecorporations so 'naturalise' their presence that, as Klein (2000) puts it, theybecome the culture. Holt (2004) writes about this process of 'culturalbranding' and shows how brands become 'icons' through a process of mythcreation. Of course the goals of brand managers and their ad agencies havenot changed, but the importance of branding expertise has become moreimportant to corporate projects, as witnessed by the emergence of corporateidentity as an academic subject and board level issue. Again, withinmarketing textbooks, branding is talked up as being of strategic importance,not merely tactical. The goals remain the same, but the symbolic has becomeof strategic importance to the return on capital. Culturalists who areinterested in a critical approach to marketing practices as part of a project of

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engaging with the politics of economy should take note.Finally, in the UK, cultural corporates, the third type of cultural brand, are

those organisations such as museums, art galleries, dance and theatrecompanies, and schools and universities whose charter or mission is culturalin the traditional sense. Increasingly, where these can be made amenable togovernment influence, essentially through their need for funding, they havebeen forced to adopt business models of operating, and thereby becomemarketised. Taking an example from education, it is clear that businessschools and management centres have also become 'marketised' as culturalcorporates in the leaming experience business. Given the presence ofbranded chairs, the intemal market for loans and transfers of scholarly talent,the packaging, commodification and trading of knowledge in the educationalmarket, the increase in student litigation, the weakness of the academic tradeunions, the loss of pay relativity by the sector as a whole, survey evidencelinking high levels of stress to academic work, the paper production culture,the casualisation of academic labour, the threat of 'human resource shedding'at allegedly under-performing schools, and the political scrutiny ofacademics' productive output by management using performance leaguetables, one tends to the conclusion that we no longer work in the marketingacademy, but in a land called Markedemia, a fully marketised and politicisedcommunity, one by which academicians are all Marked - branded - every dayof their working lives. . :

Marketing can be regarded as simply another cultural brand, andMarkedemia as a branding culture, a culture which brands (in a negativesense) its production workers through the kinds of practices mentionedabove. Far from being a neutral interpretative repertoire for the analyticalstudy of exchange relationships (as if it ever was), marketing has becomepart of the problem (in fact always has been). We used perhaps to chucklewith Levitt (1975) at the 'marketing myopia' of those businesspeople whokept their eyes on their products and not on their customers. Now, there maybe signs that the marketing discipline, the ideological servant of capital parexcellence, is itself the myopia - see for example, Marion (2004) for adiscussion of marketing as ideology.

Again, all brand cultures can be read as 'branding' cultures in that theircultures of production brand or mark their producers and consumers, forbetter or for worse. And, they are also branding cultures in so far as they seekto brand the everyday, to put their mark on how we eat (McDonald's), sleep(Silentnight), drink (Coca-Cola), defecate (Pampers), talk (Vodafone, BT),make human contact (Smirnoff), walk (Manolo Blahnik), or simply enjoy amoment of relaxation (Kit-Kat). Every minute of our lives could, it seems, bea magical branded moment from the people who care, a Neverlandsponsored experience, if only we would leave it to them.

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Implications for Arts Marketing

In addition to focusing on how to get more customers to watch Shakespeareor community theatre, or examining how better to apply marketingprinciples to cultural organisations, arts marketing should raise its sights. If itis to develop as a critical and refiexive discipline, arguably it needs toconsider these wider social-cultural perspectives on the business/cultureinterface, the issue of cultural brands. The making and selling of culturalproducts, and indeed of culture in the wider sense, is embedded withineconomic and political power relations, failure to recognise which will do adisservice to the discipline. Given the symbolic dimensions of culture, andgiven that branding is a symbolic enterprise, a discursive-analyticaltreatment of branding as discursive practice would open the way to a criticalappraisal of the relationships between business and culture. Elliott (1996) hasoutlined how and where discourse analysis might be applied in marketing,and this author would support this approach being suitably applied tocultural branding practices. Other scholars within marketing who are usingdiscourse cinalysis are Hackley (1998 2001), already mentioned above, whosework investigates advertising agency production cultures; Hopkinson (2003)on service delivery narratives, and Ellis, Jack and Higgins (2005) onmarketing discourse within the agri-food sector. As yet, there does notappear to be much published work within arts marketing on the discursiveanalysis of brands, apart perhaps from a forthcoming article by O'Reilly andDoherty, who use discourse analysis to examine the online construction ofcommuruty in a popular music context.

Conclusion : '

This conceptual paper examines the interface between culture and business,with specific reference to branding. It argues that, while considerable strideshave been made in recent years to develop Arts Marketing theory, the subjectnow needs to take account of wider social and cultural issues. The paperexplores the way in which processes of meaning-making have been theorisedin consumption and cultural studies. It argues for a view of the symbolicdimensions of branding practices that positions them within the circuit ofculture, as a cultural phenomenon. It is argued that brands are symbolicarticulators of production and consumption. In this sense, all brands arerepresentational texts, and are socially, not merely managerially, constructed.Different kinds of cultural brands are identified, including cultrepreneurs,cultural corporates and commercial corporates, and their practices in relationto business and culture are discussed. It is suggested that marketing(including branding) is not a neutral analytical repertoire for the study of

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exchange relationships, but is itself a particular kind of cultural brand,namely an ideological myopia which operates in the service of capital. It issuggested that Arts Marketing practitioners and scholars consider thesewider issues in formulating their marketing practices and research strategiesthat a discursive-analytical approach to cultural branding could lead touseful insights into the power relations at play.

Acknowledgements '

The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpfulcomments.

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About the Author

Daragh O'Reilly is a Lecturer in Marketing at Leeds University BusinessSchool, previously at Bradford University School of Management. Hisresearch interest is, broadly speaking, in the relationship between businessand culture. Recent work includes a chapter on popular music marketing inKerrigan, Fraser and Ozbilgin's (ed.) Arts Marketing (Elsevier 2004). Also inthe area of popular music, a chapter co-written with Dr Kathy Doherty(Sheffield Hallam) and entitled 'Music B(r)ands Online: ConstructingCommunity' has been accepted for publication in Ayers, M., Cybersounds:Essays on Virtual Music Culture (Peter Lang forthcoming) . He has recentlytaken over the chairmanship of the Arts & Heritage Marketing SIG of theAcademy of Marketing. Prior to entering academia, he worked in a variety ofsales/marketing roles. He is a Member of the Chartered Institute ofMarketing. . • - • ] . - ] .

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