UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Over the past decades, the concepts of brands and branding have expanded beyond their traditionally rigid product/service foci by gradually becoming blurrier and broader. The blurring of brands manifests, for example, in the co-creation of brands and their meaning together with consumers and third parties in brand communities (e.g., Sephora) and on brand platforms (e.g., Nike Run Club). Regarding the broadening of brands, we see a growing relevance of, for example, persons as brands (e.g., influencers), virtual entities as brands (e.g., smart assistants like Amazon’s Alexa), and ideas as brands (e.g., #MeToo). In this master class, we will discuss these profound evolutions surrounding brands and branding and derive what they imply for practitioners and academics. In doing so, we will jointly develop exciting new directions for future research in this area.