ABSTRACT

Brand management is no longer just the business of brand managers. The diffusion of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, together with the growing importance of an everyday culture of publicity has made brand management a feature of everyday life for a large and growing number of people. In the post-Second World War years consumer culture reached maturity in the US and most of Western Europe. Social and cultural theorists began to look at brands and consumer goods as symbols that conveyed deep and complex meanings, as a sort of material ideology that was instrumental in maintaining consensus for what, at the time, was known as 'late capitalism'. The rapid diffusion of the internet and, more recently, of social media and mobile connectivity, has rendered the presence of brands and the global media culture of which they are part ever more ubiquitous in the everyday life of ordinary people.