Constructing a corporate brand with consultants – a practice perspective

This paper builds on the growing marketing-as-practice perspective in order to empirically explore and theoretically elaborate on the practice of constructing the corporate brand with consultants and the way the emergent... [ view full abstract ]

This paper builds on the growing marketing-as-practice perspective in order to empirically explore and theoretically elaborate on the practice of constructing the corporate brand with consultants and the way the emergent practice affects the perception of doing the corporate brand within an organization. The empirical research is based on a longitudinal, ethnographic case study in an industrial, transnational company operating in a b-to-b environment. Based on the analysis, the practice of client-consultant interaction could be characterised as episodic and outside in focused, fortifying the perception of an alignment-driven approach to corporate branding. The study offers two contributions. First, it contributes to the growing body of critical research on corporate branding by abandoning the prescriptive approach and instead focusing the attention on the micro-level brand building activities between the organization and various consultancies. Second, the paper contributes to the growing marketing-as-practice research by identifying the emergent practice of brand-related client-consultant interaction and by describing the potential alignment focus that the practice might bring along.