A mechanism or tactic · 1995 · Marketing
The brand that has a personality
Corporations given a voice, a face, a founder narrative, and a tone, so that a customer relationship has a subject.
The final move of the parasocial relationship into commerce: the thing you have feelings about is a legal person. Brands now do this deliberately and in the open, and it is the completion of a process that started with a singer.
Manipulation. One-sided attachment engineered for somebody else's benefit. Paid intimacy, parasocial persuasion, sasaeng, grief extraction, the streak. The lane that pays the bills and the lane that causes the most harm, frequently at the same time.
Application. One-sided attachment put to work on purpose. Creator economies, community, fandom as infrastructure, and the things that genuinely help people. Not automatically good - a tool with an obvious use is a tool that will also get a bad one.
Where it sits
1950 1950-1999 · 1995 1999
Provenance · 1 source record(s)
- retrievableTHE CITATION THIS ENTRY WAS WAITING FOR. A peer-reviewed study of what happens when a narrative brand ends: narrative closure and 'consumption sociality' on loss accommodation. A character that is also a brand does not get to die quietlyRussell, C. A., & Schau, H. J. (2013). When Narrative Brands End: The Impact of Narrative Closure and Consumption Sociality on Loss Accommodation. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(6), 1039-1062. ↗
Connected · 3 out, 6 in
It sits in