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Managing Brands in the Age of DIY-Branding: The COBRA approach

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Handbuch Sozialtechniken der Kommunikation

Part of the book series: Springer NachschlageWissen ((SRW))

Abstract

The relatively surge of social media websites has changed the marketing landscape beyond recognition. Consumers are more connected, more active, more informed – more empowered than ever before in the history of our consumer society. Branding in this day and age is unpredictable and complex; managerial control over consumers, effectively DIY brand managers, and what are increasingly also their brands, is an illusion. Hence, persuasion-oriented, essentially one-way marketing communication tools such as advertising are losing their relevance quickly. Brand managers should instead capacitate themselves in inspiring COBRAs – an acronym for consumers’ online brand-related activities. But how does one get one’s consumers to engage in COBRAs? Based on the empirical insights of a qualitative and a quantitative study, this chapter asserts that a deep and comprehensive understanding of the how and the why of consumer brand engagement on social media (i.e., how different behaviors are motivated) are essential to that end. The managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

This chapter was inspired by the author’s previously published and unpublished academic work, specifically his doctoral dissertation titled Catching COBRAs (2013).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hyves stopped as a SNS on 2 December 2013 (it continues today as an online gaming platform targeted at children). For a long time, it was the Netherlands’ second largest social networking site – at the time of data collection, it had roughly 12 billion user profiles. Because Hyves’ features were quite similar to those of, say, Facebook, there is no reason to think that the findings reported in this chapter cannot be expected to validly generalize to other SNSs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Amsterdam, Postbus 15791, 1001 NG, Netherlands

    Daan G. Muntinga

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  1. Daan G. Muntinga
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Correspondence to Daan G. Muntinga .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bergische Universität Wuppertal Lehrstuhl für Marketing, Wuppertal, Germany

    Tobias Langner

  2. EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht, Oestrich-Winkel, Germany

    Franz-Rudolf Esch

  3. Unternehmensführung Wirtschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Basel Lehrstuhl für Marketing und, Basel, Switzerland

    Manfred Bruhn

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Muntinga, D.G. (2016). Managing Brands in the Age of DIY-Branding: The COBRA approach. In: Langner, T., Esch, FR., Bruhn, M. (eds) Handbuch Sozialtechniken der Kommunikation. Springer NachschlageWissen. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-05262-1_28-1

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