Susie Khamis

Self-branding, ‘micro-celebrity’ and the rise of Social Media Influencers

ABSTRACT The notion of self-branding has drawn myriad academic responses over the last decade. First popularised in a provocative piece published in Fast Company, self-branding has been criticised by some on theoretical, practical and ethical grounds, while others have endorsed and propelled the idea. This article considers how and why the concept of self-branding has become so prevalent. We contend that it parallels the growth of digital technology (particularly social media) embedded in the current political climate: neoliberal individualism. Another objective here is to imbue the concept of self-branding with a marketing perspective and show how the ‘celebrities’ of self-branding manifest at a marketing media nexus distinct to the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Building on literature from mostly media and cultural studies, this critique sees self-branding as a distortion of key branding principles that has obvious implications for its practitioners and advocates. The article shows that, despite inherent tensions and problematic ironies, self-branding persists through the rise of Social Media Influencers; we consider three of these whose fame and following was achieved via the practices and phenomena under consideration.

Brand Australia: half-truths for a hard sell

In May 2010 the Australian government launched “Australia Unlimited”, a four-year Austrade campaign to sell Brand Australia. Logistically and politically, Brand Australia is a delicate proposition, since it calls for consistency and coherence, as well as consensus. Given that nations are already “messy”, politically, culturally and socially, any symbolic representation designed to resolve or mask this mess would be contentious. Brand Australia thus constitutes a fragile, highly contingent but, according to government bureaus, economically necessary strategy: globalisation compels nations to flag their strengths with clarity and in competition. Brand logic entails that these strengths are folded into a single and stable message. In the case of Australia, though, certain images have contributed to perceptions of the nation that clash with those of “Australia Unlimited”. The history of Australias tourism campaigns has played a part in this, as have specific events in Australias recent history. As an idealised national narrative, then, there is a fundamental problem with this campaign: it speaks of a cosmopolitan multiculturalism that is absent from other, more dominant representations of the nation, a disjuncture that undermines the premise and potential of effective brand management.

Braving the BurqiniTM: re-branding the Australian beach

A cross between a bikini and a burqa, the BurqiniTM reworks a conventional symbol of Australian culture in terms consistent with Muslim modesty. In turn, the Burqini TM stakes a deeply ironic claim to one of the nation’s most revered sites: the beach. This article thus considers its significance in relation to two dominant stereotypes in recent Australian history: the ‘beach babe’, typically blonde, blue-eyed and bikinied; and a view of conservative Muslim culture that had taken shape in mainstream Australian media: as restrictive, regressive and misogynist. By appropriating the traditional bikini design for a contemporary Muslim clientele, the BurqiniTM is both a confronting cultural statement and a bold example of 21st century world fashion.

Thrift, sacrifice and Bushells tea : one brand's strategy in the early 1930s

In the early 1930s, the Bushells brand of tea faced a market dampened by the grim mood of the Great Depression. In response and in contrast to the images it had pursued just a few years earlier, Bushells integrated a discourse of judicious consumption into its advertising. Sensitive to the atmosphere of caution and restraint, yet also mindful of middle-class aspirations, the brand forged a unique point of difference that would survive the recession. Given tea’s popularity in Australia in this period, and the extent to which Bushells was associated with middle-class tastes, this was an innovative and effective strategy.

Timor-Leste Coffee

Abstract Over the past decade, Timor-Leste has aimed to identify and execute numerous peace-building and state-building initiatives. Central to the country’s strategic development plan is the careful management of its resources and exports. While the development of downstream industries in the oil and gas sector is the tiny nation’s strongest source of revenue, rehabilitation of its coffee sector has also been flagged for development. Although a relatively small player in the global coffee trade—producing under 0.2 percent of the global coffee supply—Timor-Leste’s coffee sector enjoys one comparative advantage: it constitutes the largest single-source producer of organic coffee in the world. However, despite attempts to boost this sector’s viability through fair-trade partnerships and development-oriented agents, the complex interplay of myriad structural bulwarks shows just how formidable the challenge facing Timor-Leste is. This phenomenon is situated within the fraught history of Timor-Leste and the current plight of its coffee sector sits within a larger narrative of extreme deprivation and asymmetries of power. This article thus considers the limits of fair-trade organic coffee exports to address Timor-Leste’s acute poverty.

The ironic marketing of heritage and nostalgia: the branding of Bushells tea, 1983-c.1990

Purpose This study aims to examine and contextualize the growing salience of nostalgic motifs in the promotion of Bushells Tea from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. It aims to analyze the ironic foregrounding of a rural aesthetic as a strategic evasion of growing concerns in popular media about the globalization of the Australian economy and the concomitant “takeover” of iconic Australian brands, including Bushells, by multinational corporations. Design/methodology/approach This article draws on three main materials: a collection of Bushells advertisements (from newspapers, magazines and television), promotional materials, rare press clippings and company memos/briefs, which were loaned to the author for the purposes of this research by Unilever Australasia (Sydney, Australia); contemporary press reports that document popular reactions to the rapid globalization of the Australian economy in the early 1990s; and biographies of key personnel and organizations. Findings Despite its gradual takeover by a multinational corporation, the Bushells brand was marketed in ways that evoked an “authentic” and nostalgic nationalism through imagery that drew on the nation’s rural past, reproduced a rustic aesthetic and sentimentalized a pre-globalized era. Originality/value This article constitutes original interdisciplinary analysis of how one of Australia’s most iconic and historically dominant brands (Bushells Tea) was marketed during one of the most tumultuous periods in its history. Through examination of rare archival material and contemporary press reports, the analysis makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of brand marketing history in Australia.