The chapter articulates the transition from consistent brand image projection to engaging consumer landmarks through advocacy and identity affiliation, spotlighting the integral role of brand equity. In exploring the different interpretations of brand symbols across varied consumer groups, it acknowledges the challenges brands face in maintaining relevance and authenticity in an increasingly complex digital landscape. This underscores the necessity for brands to evolve as landmarks within the cultural landscape, guiding consumer engagement and fostering community and belonging, while avoiding the pitfalls of perceived intrusiveness.

The focus in this chapter is on addressing the evolving power dynamics in brand–consumer relationships within the cultural landscape, underscoring the role of brands as both landmarks and co-creators of cultural narratives with consumers. It challenges the effectiveness of top-down approaches in altering behavioural norms, suggesting instead that brands must adapt to the consumer’s role in co-authoring brand identity. It emphasises that brands symbolise aspects of self that consumers constantly negotiate, seeking alignment between their self-identity and self-projection.

This negotiation occurs within a complex cultural landscape where brands must be both visible and adaptable to maintain their relevance and position. The narrative structures that brands establish are pivotal, serving as paths that guide consumers towards or away from brands, thus shaping the brand’s role and visibility in the cultural landscape. This chapter encourages brands to understand and leverage their symbolic capital, develop clear narrative structures, and foster consumer co-ownership to become and remain landmarks within the cultural landscape amidst constant shifts in consumer power and cultural contexts.

The chapter examines tangible and intangible evidence associated with the Irish who emigrated and settled in America and who sometimes returned to Ireland and evaluates whether it can be considered as part of an Americanising of Irish identity. Material culture associated with Irish emigration to America such as posters, guidebooks, newspapers, wakes, places, spaces, letters, remittances and the returner, ideas and behaviours became integral parts of Irish society and their influence went beyond their practical use in facilitating departure. Each created a vision of America in Ireland which accords with Mark Wyman and Dirk Hoerder’s European-wide findings that two distinct images of America emerged in the home country: the ‘materialistic view of the land of wealth, and the idealistic view of the land of equal rights and democracy’. These largely positive views of America translated into ‘Americanising’ forces in Irish society alongside British and other European economic, political and cultural forces in Ireland. These two-way forces revolving around America as a destination and as a swiftly modernising country, particularly from the nineteenth century onwards, meant that Irish women and men of all backgrounds were exposed to American ideas, practices and behaviours.

This chapter examines the relationship between ownership and power in the context of consumer identity and brand dynamics within the cultural landscape. Ownership extends beyond the legal possession of objects to include psychological territory where brands become integral to consumers’ self-identity and self-projection. This multifaceted concept of ownership is explored through the lens of various stakeholders – consumers, employees, and corporations – each wielding influence over brand perception and value. This chapter further explores how consumers, as stakeholders, gain power by shaping brand value and meaning, emphasising the role of community and collective identity in this process. With the advent of digital platforms even lurkers contribute to the brand’s narrative, challenging traditional notions of ownership and control.

Historically, marketing has viewed women primarily as consumers and men as producers, a perspective deeply ingrained in societal gender constructs. Contemporary shifts in consumer culture, particularly the integration of physical and digital realms, have transformed the roles women play as both consumers and producers, challenging traditional gender-based market segmentation. Central to the discussion is the concept of gender as a cultural performance, with brands acting as signifiers aiding consumers in navigating their cultural landscapes. This navigation is influenced by a consumer’s gender identity and their desire for self-expression. Brands, therefore, are not just products but markers that consumers use to articulate and negotiate their identities within a gendered cultural context. Gender is presented as a spectrum, influencing how consumers relate to brands and how brands can segment their markets more effectively by gender identity rather than biological sex. Brands that understand and engage with the gendered performances of a consumer’s sense of self can create ‘safe spaces’ for consumers to express their identities, fostering deeper connections and brand loyalty.

This chapter considers the significance of authenticity in the context of branding and consumer behaviour. Authenticity is a complex construct that cannot be directly measured or calculated like other marketing metrics. It is particularly valued during times of change and uncertainty, serving not just as a unique selling proposition for brands but also as a means for consumers to align their choices with their self-identity and self-projection, underscoring the importance of consistency, conformity, and connection in understanding authenticity. These aspects not only help in defining what is ‘authentic’ but also demonstrate the strategic use of authenticity by brands to establish themselves as landmarks within the cultural landscape of consumers.

This chapter explores how perceived authenticity, influenced by a consumer’s narrative of self-identity and self-projection, aids in navigating the cultural landscape. This navigation involves using brands as landmarks to move closer to, or further from, consumers’ ‘authentic’ selves, thereby underscoring the crucial role that brand authenticity plays in consumers’ lives.

Economic capital is not the sole determinant of a brand’s power; rather, consumer interactions and cultural positioning significantly influence brand narrative and ownership. This chapter focusses on how technologies have complicated these power relations, enabling consumers to co-author brand narratives in digital brand communities. This has led to a fluidity of power where some brands have adeptly navigated the currents, repositioning themselves and engaging new consumers. Using Skype, Burberry, and Old Spice as examples, this case study discusses the failures and successes of brands in maintaining equilibrium in the power dynamic. Burberry’s journey illustrates the brand’s struggle and eventual success in reclaiming its image from unintended consumer associations, while Skype’s decline showcases the challenges of sustaining consumer connection and relevance in a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Old Spice exemplifies the successful redirection of brand power towards a new narrative that resonates with both male and female consumers.

The second case study in this book offers a deep dive into the brand activism of two distinct entities: the fashion giant Kate Spade and the social enterprise organisation Change Please. These two brands show how brand activism, especially when authentically aligned with a brand’s mission, can significantly influence targeted societal groups. Kate Spade is highlighted as a brand with activism ingrained in its DNA, focussing on women’s empowerment and mental health. Change Please is showcased as a social enterprise born with a mission to tackle homelessness through the daily habit of coffee drinking. It demonstrates how a brand built on social activism can enable significant societal change while operating a sustainable business model. Furthermore, this chapter indicates the importance of partnerships in amplifying brand activism, showing how Kate Spade and Change Please exemplify the ways in which brands can serve as navigational landmarks for consumers, and thus providing a blueprint for other entities seeking to embed activism into their business models.

As a theology student in North Wales, Gerard Manley Hopkins immersed himself in Welsh landscapes and the Welsh language; in so doing, he developed his distinctive poetic idiom. Yet Hopkins’s responses to Wales are also charged with political and psychological complexities. Wales has a deep, contested history of invention and reinvention, and Hopkins is part of a tradition of writers who have performed identity against the backdrop of an ideological Welsh landscape. Hopkins’s bardic nom de plume, ‘Brân Maenefa’ – the name with which he signed ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ – has often been understood as a jest, but it is better understood as a psychic-aesthetic identity, one whose performance gave Hopkins permission to pursue a poetic vocation. Wales was Hopkins’s ‘mother of Muses’ because he required Wales, and in a sense created Wales, as a m/otherland that, by virtue of its alterity, could mother-forth a unique poetic identity.

Tracing the figure of the ‘non-Russian’ across nearly three centuries of Russian writing and literary tendencies, this chapter considers how it came to embody cultural and philosophical values against which Russian writers sought to measure their own culture, history, and politics. The chapter shows that the ‘non-Russian’ was a figure central to a range of writers who grappled with Russia’s position between the symbolic antinomies of East and West, confronted the Russian and Soviet empires or emerged out of it, or used the figure to formulate what ‘Russianness’ could mean. As the constant companion of their ‘Russian’ counterparts, the ‘non-Russian’ figures examined in this chapter include those created by ethnically Russian writers as well as those who wrote in Russian while also navigating their own ethnic identities within various historical contexts and literary tendencies.