Ideology plays a vital role in politics, but not only so. Also in consumer life, ideologically based attitudes and stances are immanent. Building on four different business models within the fashion industry, a model with two axes is presented. The two axes are conceptual recursion and consumption as social ideology. Fashion easily contains a progressive attitude; the social environment creates a milieu where consumers and businesses operate, and in this ambiance of ideas they will be able to (inside-out or outside-in) foot themselves in ideology. Hence, fashion can be said to uphold ideological attitudes, whether explicit or not. The model captures these ideological mindsets. It makes clear how the business models in themselves are ridden by ideology and the expression of brands, as well as bringing an overall understanding of the role ideology plays in entrepreneurship and enterprise development in the fashion industry.

Se hit! reklamens pockande envisa stridsrop ljuder genom samhället, ända in i denna bok. Som en kärleksaffär med förhinder penetrerar bokens nio brev olika aspekter av företagsekonomin och marknadsföringens dolda, smygande teaterförställning där vi alla är skådespelare och publik, vare sig vi vill eller inte. Samtidigt.

Bokan handlar om vikten av att använda sin magkänsla i arbetet med att utveckla varumärken och affärer. Om att våga experimentera och erbjuda affärsmodeller som inte funnits tidigare - modeller som kan förändra en hel bransch. 

Karin Winroth låter oss möta två modiga och framgångsrika entreprenörer som börjande sin bana i blogg- respektive mediavärlden och bjuder på ett djupdykning i konsumtionskultur, sociala karriärer och digitala äventyr bland modeeliten. Här berättar också en världskänd entreprenör, med nära koppling till modebranschen, om sin passion - att förvalta och förnya hästkrafter, varumärken och affärer.

Vad händer med oss människor när konceptet varumärken blir så allmängiltigt att det får krypa in under vår hud?

The technological development in the last decades and the practice of digital consumption are shifting the conditions of contemporary branding (Denegri-Knott and Molesworth 2010; Sanz 2014). The Internet enriches the possibility of communication around brands as it opens an autonomous arena still very accessible in everyday life. The net is not so much about transactions as about offering an arena for dialogue and relations. But as consumption has become a central lotus for community in our society, the conversation often shifts into a dialogue of transactions. 

The Internet offers a ‘third space’ where social relations can be playfully constructed, creating a perfect arena for the shaping of a persona. It offers a space for exchange of information and for constituting an audience as members of a community. So participation in the Internet can be both ‘a formal social enterprise’ and ‘an organized public’ involving various forms of interaction between these two (Fish, Murillo, Nguyen, Panofsky and Kelty, 2011). The Internet opens possibilities for consumers to exchange information and sometimes build their own brands, as for instance bloggers, creating a public arena for their taste, suggestions and knowledge. As a consequence, for being an opportunity to building brands, the arena become a platform for these brand builders to develop their entrepreneurial talents.

Even though many theories and models concerned with strategic branding suggest that brand managers seduce their consumers into consuming products and services, this point of view has been seriously questioned. Instead branding has become understood as a process where several actors contribute imbedded in socio-spatial interactions (Holt, 2004; Lury 2004; Power and Hauge, 2007). When trying to understand how a brand emerges out of the various voices that give meaning and significance to it, Holt (2004) introduces the concept of ‘co-authors’. By this, Holt means that several possible actors influence the symbolic message that is conveyed by a brand. Corporations, consumers, mediators (e.g. critics and agents) and the cultural industry are suggested to be the so-called ‘co-authors of significance’. Following Lury’s (2004, 1) suggestion brand is here understood not as a commodity set but ‘a set of relations between production and services’, emerging out of a network of relationships.

Researchers in marketing and entrepreneurship (Hills & Hultman 2011, Whalen & Akala 2016) have increasingly incorporated the concepts of effectuation(Sarasvathy 2001) to emphasize the role of stakeholders in the processes of co-creating opportunities, values and markets. Sarasvathy’s (2001) critical view of the traditional marketing approach highlight the role of uncertainty and ambiguity in the marketing process of a new venture start-ups (Read et al 2009; Read & Sarasvathy 2012) and have opened up for compelling new research perspectives and questions in the area of marketing and entrepreneurship. However, the role of the brands and the process of branding in effectuation processes are still undeveloped topics. A proposed research contribution is to incorporate the concept of ‘co-authors’ in the effectuation literature.

With a focus on how brands emerge out of a network of relations, the purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to illustrate brands as emerging out of a network of co-authors; and (2) to demonstrate how this process can be integrated into the idea of entrepreneurship as effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2001). The discussion will be illustrated by using two examples of branding processes intertwined with entrepreneurial processes in the digital world.

One example of this is how the Internet can be, and often is, used for creating ‘celebrity’ (Hackley and Hackley, 2015) or in other words using the possibility offered by the web for ordinary consumers to reach a mass audience. The cause of this celebrity are shifting and sometimes only about somebody making themselves visible on the Internet, like for instance on Youtube, or a fashion blogger building a blog that has turned out to attract consumers.The phenomenon of fashion bloggers initially developing personal brands on the ‘labour market’ and later developing their brands into various entrepreneurial ventures has been acknowledged (Phil 2013). Bloggers’ personal brands have a possible competitive advantage, as their names are already known and established with an audience.Also, the visual economy assemble access through a screen, and it needs celebrities to give visual resonance and market definition to images of consumption (Schroeder, 2005). The cases illustrate how a fashion-blogger and a digital media-entrepreneur build and evolve their initial brand to expand into several well-established ventures. 

Nordic crime novels have become a phenomenon on the global book market, famous for painting a dark picture of previously idealized societies. The success of Nordic Noir belongs specifically with its reception in Germany, which holds a longstanding interest in all things Northern or Scandinavian. Nordic crime novels are translated and packaged in ways to render them with a specific Northern ambiance: snowy, solitary and sinister. Brands then belong with paratext, such as backside texts and cover images that construct a given text. The main argument is that brands like Nordic Noir resonate culture and thrive on the paratextual threshold. This chapter combines interviews with literary agents, an editor and German-language readers with illustrative examples of paratextual elements of Nordic Noir and especially Schwedenkrimi. Firstly, the German market was already primed by interest in Noir and regional identity before the emergence of Nordic Noir, creating a backdrop for its reception. For readers Nordic Noir connects outer and inner landscapes, creating a more nuanced understanding that even “normal” people can become criminal. To conclude, the case of crime novels and Nordic Noir highlight how paratext can bring out symbolic qualities of a text in a way that resonates and reverberate a brand, and especially across cultural borders.

Samtiden har tagit ett allt större grepp om vår erfarenhetsbildning. Ändå är det många som menar att samtiden inte bör betraktas som en samlad enhet. I en nyutkommen idéhistorisk antologi samlas en rad forskare som urskiljer flera samtider.