The activist brand and the transformational power of resistance: towards a narrative conceptual framework

Abstract

Brand activism has become a popular term for describing how brands are becoming involved with controversial sociopolitical issues. The activist brand is thus characterised by its engagement with controversy and understood in and through macro-level cultural oppositions which it continuously orbits and positions itself against. The purpose of this paper is to contribute with a conceptual gaze at the activist brand's inherent controversy that enables an understanding of the online micro-level dynamics and processes that transform the online activist brand. Drawing on a narrative approach, the paper develops an ante- and counternarrative framework to explain how these complex micro-level dynamics and processes of resistance transform the brand. The framework allows us to approach the activist brand as the result of a complex network of antenarratives and counternarratives, which the brand flows in and out of, retells, supports, and resists.

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