Description: 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.
Brief description: 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).
Review Quotes: "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