Silence of the Brands

Part of: Digital Marketing Topic 4 — Brand Identity & Storytelling · Reading Citation: Salzer-Mörling, M. & Strannegård, L. (2004). Silence of the brands. European Journal of Marketing, 38(1/2), 224–238. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560410511203 Key concepts: Brand Identity, Brand Storytelling, Brandscape, Brand Aesthetics, Co-Creation

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TL;DR

This conceptual paper challenges the dominant view of brands as corporately managed stories told by senders to passive receivers. The authors argue that brands no longer primarily speak through verbal narratives — they show through visual images. Branding is therefore better understood as a process of aesthetic expression built on feeling, impression and immersion rather than on meaning and persuasion. Because consumers actively use, re-use and even subvert brand signs (skinheads in Fred Perry, adbusters distorting logos), brand meaning is an outcome of joint construction in a "brandscape", not a starting point owned and controlled by the firm.

Why It's on the Reading List

It is the critical, theory-led counterpoint for the brand identity / storytelling topic: it teaches you to question the neat "sender → message → receiver" model of branding and to think about brands as visual, aesthetic and co-constructed — a useful lens for exam questions on what a brand "really is" and who controls its meaning.

Background & Research Question

Since the late 1980s brands have moved to centre stage: from a mere marker identifying a producer to becoming the product that is consumed. In an economy moving "from substance to image" (Alvesson, 1990), the production of signs matters more than the production of objects. The mainstream branding literature treats the brand as the firm's most crucial asset — an equity to be expressed through persuasive stories about core values.

The authors identify a gap: both the managerial branding literature and critical cultural studies cast the consumer as a passive receiver of pre-defined branded stories. Their aim is to re-conceptualise branding as aesthetic expression in which the conventional distinction between senders and receivers becomes blurred. The guiding questions: How are brand expressions created? Can they be controlled by the firm? What are the roles of producers and consumers in constructing expressive brands?

Key Concepts & Definitions

Definition — Brandscape

A commercialised social landscape where the production and consumption of commercial icons takes place; "a battlefield of brand names, images and logos striving to be heard" (Christensen & Cheney, 2000). It is the arena in which brand images are expressed, impressed or suppressed.

Definition — Mediascape

Drawing on Appadurai (1996), the dimension of global cultural flows through which large repertoires of images (TV, internet, film, magazines) are disseminated. The mediascape is the prerequisite that makes the brandscape possible.

Definition — Aesthetics (as used here)

Not judgements of beauty or harmony (the classical sense) but sensory knowledge — from the Greek aisth, "to feel". An aesthetic approach to brands is grounded in feeling, intuition and immersion rather than logico-rational cognition.

Two contrasting modes of communication, drawing on Lash's (1988) reading of Lyotard:

The conventional brand equity model (Aaker, 1996) is summarised as four asset categories:

• brand name awareness
• brand loyalty
• perceived quality
• brand associations

Main Arguments / Findings

1. The mainstream literature is "single-voiced" and audial. Brand theory (Aaker, Kapferer, Keller, Melin, Apéria, Jensen) frames the brand-owner as a story-teller and the market as an audience. Concepts such as awareness, associations, loyalty and narration all assume a sender, a message and a receiver. Brand identity (Kapferer 1992; Aaker's core vs. extended identity) is positioned at the centre, fine-tuned to better communicate the desired message.

2. Brands are seen, not heard. The authors' central move: as the brand becomes the product itself (a Prada garment, an Adidas item as symbolic sign), it is less a story about values than an image of aesthetic expression. Branding shifts from producing information to producing impressions.

Voice vs. vision

Advertising often tells stories ("feel lonely? buy these chips and feel joy" — Czarniawska's three-element narrative). Brands, by contrast, are highly abstract figural signs whose value lies in the impressions they make, not the meanings they create. The rise of image over story is what distinguishes traditional marketing from the emerging brandscape.

3. A third stance: double agency. Against both brand-cheerleaders (Olins: brands are "the greatest gift commerce has brought to popular culture") and the doom-laden critics (Klein's No Logo; a "giant global Disney World inhabited by silenced citizens"), the authors propose focusing on the double agency of the brandscape. Consumers are not a passive audience: signs become value-laden brands only when consumers absorb, immerse in and use them. Consumption is a form of aesthetic reflexivity (Lash & Urry) through which people construct identities — "I shop therefore I am".

Brands escape corporate control

• Fred Perry: marketed to sporty upper-middle-class consumers, yet for decades worn by skinheads as a sign of belonging — a meaning the firm never intended.
• Cultural jamming / adbusters: activists "subvertise" by hijacking billboards and distorting logos (e.g. adding "true" to "The Colors of Benetton"), using the brands' own aesthetic language to critique corporate hypocrisy.

Implication

Any story or meaning a brand carries is an outcome of contextual, social use — never a fixed, ready-made narrative waiting to be unfolded. Corporations can never fully control how brand expressions are created or recontextualised.

Framework / Model

The paper is conceptual, not empirical, but it advances a clear re-framing rather than a testable model: branding moves from a narrative/sender model (firm crafts a story → audience receives meaning) to an aesthetic/expressive model (firm distributes silent visual signs → signs are consumed, contextualised and mobilised by reflexive consumers → meaning emerges as an effect). Drawing on Baudrillard, consumption is a "systematic manipulation of signs": on the sign-value level objects can be substituted infinitely, and consumers use brands however they like.

Implications for Marketers

• Branding is increasingly about producing visual impressions and aesthetic experiences, not just communicating verbal value propositions.
• The firm is not in full control of its brand's meaning; brands live in a social context and are re-appropriated by consumers and activists.
• Investing in tightly controlled "corporate stories" can backfire when those moralised values are not lived up to (vulnerability to scrutiny, cultural jamming).
• Think of consumers as active co-producers of brand meaning, capable of subverting intended signals.

Exam Takeaways

Likely exam points

• The core thesis: brands are silent — they communicate via figural images (sensation/immersion), not discursive stories (meaning/persuasion).
• Distinguish the sender→message→receiver model (mainstream brand theory) from the double-agency / co-construction view.
• Define brandscape, mediascape, and aesthetic reflexivity.
• Key examples: Fred Perry / skinheads (uncontrolled appropriation) and adbusters / cultural jamming (subversion).
• Aaker's four brand-equity assets (awareness, loyalty, perceived quality, associations) — used here as the model being critiqued.
• "Meaning is an effect rather than a starting point."

Summary

• Brands have shifted from markers of origin to products consumed in their own right.
• Mainstream branding literature treats brands as managed stories; the authors reject this as too "single-voiced".
• Branding is reframed as aesthetic expression: images over stories, impression over meaning.
• Consumers actively use, re-use and subvert brand signs — meaning is jointly constructed in the brandscape.
• Corporate control over brand meaning is therefore volatile and incomplete.

Related Notes

• Digital Marketing — subject hub
• 04b-Aime - The Dynamic Construction of Brand Storytelling — empirical counterpart on co-creation of storytelling
• Brand Identity, Brand Storytelling, Brand Equity, Co-Creation