Antecedents of the attitude toward the athlete celebrities' human brand extensions

PurposeThe present study aims to examine how consumers evaluate the extended human brands of athlete celebrities beyond their unique brand personality associated with sports. Athlete celebrities' unique image in sports is used as a human brand, and attitude toward the athlete brand extensions is investigated when the athlete's name is included in a new non-sport brand. The concepts of brand extensions were employed to develop the ideas of human brand extensions.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 198 participants answered online survey questions before and after being informed of athlete brand extensions. Partial least squares structural equation modeling is utilized to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe survey results indicated that athlete–product fit and image transfer positively influenced attitude toward the extension. In addition, attitude toward the athlete brand extensions was significantly influenced by consumers' pre-existing attitude toward the celebrity; however, not by celebrity's expertise.Originality/valueThe research findings imply that some brand extension concepts are applicable to human brands to understand the effectiveness of athlete brand extensions for non-sport products.

The Effects of Social Media Content Created by Human Brands on Engagement: Evidence from Indian General Election 2014

With human brands or individual celebrities in fields ranging from sports to politics increasingly using social media platforms to engage with their audience, it is important to understand the key drivers of online engagement. Using Twitter data from the political domain, we show that positive and negative-toned content receive higher engagement, as measured by retweets, than mixed or neutral toned tweets. However, less popular human brands generate higher social media engagement from positive-toned content compared with more popular human brands. Therefore, we recommend that popular human brands (e.g., popular politicians or chief executive officers) keep their content objective rather than emotional. Furthermore, the tone of related brands (i.e., human brands who belong to the same political party) has a strong reinforcement effect; that is, social media engagement is higher when the tone of the focal human brand and related brands are the same and lower when the tones are different. Therefore, we prescribe that human brands actively coordinate their social media content with related brands to generate higher engagement. From human brands’ perspective, our findings recommend a comprehensive social media strategy, which takes into account the tone of content, tone of related brands’ content, and human brands’ popularity.

The Human Brand: A systematic literature review and research agenda

The purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth overview of the scientific literature pertaining to the Human Brand (HB) and to highlight research opportunities based on trends and gaps identified over the course of our study. We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) examining a total of 3910 articles containing the keywords "personal brand" OR "personal brands" OR "personal branding" OR "human brand" OR "human brands" OR "human branding" OR "influencer*" published between 2006 and 2019. We analysed these documentary sources according to our criteria of inclusion and exclusion, then selected 101 articles from 77 different scientific journals. Based on our results, the artistic industry represents the most studied industry and, it is the influencer which prevails as the most studied type of HB. In addition, influencer identification on social media represents the most studied subject. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, we present a comprehensive research agenda for potential future studies in this academic field. Secondly, to our knowledge, this is the first SLR focusing on the HB. Based on the existing literature, we offer an overview of past research while providing findings contributing to a better theoretical and contextual understanding of the subject of interest.

“It’s good.” “says who?”: the mediating role of professional legitimacy on the relationship between film-extension performance and changes in directors’ human brand identity

Purpose Building strong human brands inscribed in social and symbolic recognition is a strategic issue for branded individuals. In the context of film director human brands, this study aims to examine the respective influences of the economic and critical performance of films, on the one hand, and the professional legitimacy bestowed by internal stakeholders, on the other, on changes in human brand identity. Contrary to what is generally believed, it shows that the specific legitimacy bestowed by producers and the institutional legitimacy bestowed by elite peers mediate the effects of performance on changes in human brand identity. Brand extension (i.e. new films) incongruence and initial human brand identity moderate the effect of performance on legitimacy. Design/methodology/approach This study is applied to film director human brands and to their extensions through the films they make. Data were collected for 81 films, including information before and after the brand extension occurs, to capture changes in human brand identity and extension effects. Findings The results show that economic performance influences both specific and institutional legitimacy, whereas critical performance only impacts institutional legitimacy. These relationships are moderated by initial human brand identity and congruence. Both types of professional legitimacies also help reinforce human brand identity. Originality/value The study challenges the role of performance on the building of human brand identity and shows that the latter is co-constructed by the branded individual and internal stakeholders. It also enhances the key roles of global incongruence and genre incongruence in the model.

A thematic exploration of human brands: literature review and agenda for future research

Purpose The purpose of this study is threefold. First, human brands are conceptualized and the distinction between them and personal brands is established. Second, human-brand research is reviewed in light of a strategic brand management framework and gaps in the knowledge that may suggest new research pathways are identified. Third, the extent to which a brand management model designed for products could be applied to human brands is explored. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review was conducted in this study. The content analysis of the selected set of papers allowed the assessment of the state of this field of brand management and the identification of proposals for future research. Findings Substantial research exists on different aspects of human brands. However, these studies are fragmented in nature, thus highlighting the need for specific and complete human-brand management models. Research limitations/implications A limitation of this literature review is that it is based on a sample of papers collected by one specific criterion; furthermore, the way the papers were classified may be challenged. However, this study provides a comprehensive picture of studies on human brands available today. Originality/value A parsimonious distinction and connectivity between human and personal brands suggest a branding-by-individual continuum. Additionally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first identifiable one that summarizes the growing literature on human brands, reveals important gaps in the knowledge and calls for the development of particular human-brand management models.