The activist brand and the transformational power of resistance: towards a narrative conceptual framework

Sophie Esmann Andersen () and Trine Susanne Johansen ()
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Sophie Esmann Andersen: Aarhus University
Trine Susanne Johansen: Aarhus University

Journal of Brand Management, 2024, vol. 31, issue 2, No 4, 140-152

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Keywords: Activist brand; Cultural brand; Micro-level; Narrative; Antenarrative; Counternarrative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1057/s41262-023-00320-1

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