New Instagram Channel! “Brückenbau Marke – Wissenschaft trifft Praxis”

Brand Science and Brand Practice should benefit each other. However, in reality they are moving away from each other. Studies show that practitioners are not familiar with academic journals – the main channel of Brand Science communication.

There are several reasons for this such as the decreasing relevance of science through the increasing focus on micro problems as a result of the „Publish-or-Perrish“ mentality. Additionally, the methodologies described in journal articles are often hard to understand and last but not least there is a sheer overload of information with around 6000 journal articles being published on Marketing every year.

Prof. Baumgarth has been trying to close this gap for years through an intensive collaboration with practitioners and innovative formats (e.g. the Pop-up Exhibition „Farbrausch trifft RAL 4010“).
His latest project is the Instagram channel „Brückenbau Marke – Wissenschaft trifft Praxis“. Via the Instagram-Account prof.baumgarth Prof. Dr. Baumgarth shares interesting and practicable insights into brand science. He vividly and accessibly explains relevant journal articles especially for practitioners and students.

He presents the major classic articles among them Aaker, Keller and Fournier as well as „newcomers“ written in 2019 and 2020 together with cases explaining concepts using well-known brands and news from B*lab – research he and his team are involved in.

By now, his channel counts about 400 followers. If you would like to find out more about his motivation, and the function of the channel, you can find an interview in markenartikel and a blog post on the brand blog by Dietrich Identity.

We invite you to get to know the channel and to follow, like and share!

Pepper strengthens our team

A new recruit joined Prof. Baumgarth’s team yesterday – the humanoid robot, “Pepper”. Through the acquisition of extensive funds from the Institute for Applied Research (IFAF), our B*lab at the HWR can be significantly expanded once again. The humanoid robot Pepper of the Japanese company Softbank represents a flexibly applicable humanoid robot in the field of social robotics. The robot, which weighs around 30 kilos and is 1.30 m tall, can communicate and interact with consumers through its visual and tactile sensors, its facial expression and emotion recognition as well as its voice output and display. Over the next few months, we will familiarize ourselves with the robot and the software solution provided by the German company Entrance. Starting in early 2021, we also plan to use Pepper in research projects on humanoid brand-touchpoints.

Master & and bachelor thesis in the winter semester

Dear students,

as in the last semesters, you can apply for the supervision of your thesis by me. It is important that your planned topic fits to my fields of research. Therefore I have formulated both my fields of research and potential topics. Of course you can also apply with your own topic. However, in your application you should then make a connection between your topic and my research topics. The application deadline is 13.7.2020. All important details can be found here.

Brand Work Manifesto & COVID-19

The new Real Estate Brand Book 2020 contains a short article on the relationship between our Brand Work Manifesto and the current corona crisis. Prof Baumgarth interprets current brand examples against the background of the four metaprinciples of the Brand Work Manifesto: open, agile, digital and authentic. Although the Brand Work Manifesto was developed and discussed well before the current crisis (summer/autumn 2019), it is astonishing how well the considerations fit the current position. The contribution can be downloaded here.

Is it the end of the AI Brand Winter? Artificial Intelligence in Brand Management

The book chapter Is it the end of the AI Brand winter? Artificial Intelligence in Brand Management by Carsten Baumgarth, Alexandra Kirkby and Anja Lambrecht has recently appeared in the publication Digitalisation in Business Management. The conversation and interest in artificial intelligence is ever increasing across multiple different fields, yet in the area of brand management and brand science, the topic has seemingly not yet made itself felt.  Our book chapter provides an up to date definition of artificial intelligence and examines AI applications in selected areas of brand management, while also working in other areas of businesses like trading with markets like fx trade as well. The applications considered in this chapter include social listening, AI-supported brand management, media planning, voice as a branding element, personalization, challenges and more.

Brand Management in a Midlife Crisis: The Brand Work Manifesto

Brand Management has not come to the end of the road, but it is facing a midlife crisis. In this phase questions of meaning and reorientation is not only reasonable for humans. In response to this necessary reorientation and realignment, we developed the so-called Brand Work Manifesto together with marketing experts working in brand consulting and brand management in 2019, and at the beginning of 2020 we started to put it up for discussion (Baumgarth et al. 2020), but for this the use of web design packages are great if you want to do marketing online. In eleven paragraphs which are divided into four meta principles, the old rules of brand management are opposed to the new rules. From the authors’ perspective brands have to become more open, agile, digital and authentic in order to cope with the changes in their environment. The term „Manifesto“ was chosen consciously, because of its historical meaning. Manifestos are regularly used in situations of political change (e.g. communist manifesto), cultural-artistic chance (e.g. Bauhaus Manifesto, Dadaist manifesto) as well as in times of economic change (e.g. Cluestrain Manifesto, Manifest of Agile Software Development) to formulate trenchant impulses for discussion. The Brand Work Manifesto does not claim scientific accuracy. Instead, it was created to stimulate a debate. More information is available on and www.brandworkmanifesto.org in our LinkedIn group.

Ottobock case in JBR

An article on the development of the technology brand Ottobock has recently been published in the renowned Journal of Business Research (A-Journal, Q1). Together with co-authors Dr. Samuel Kristal and Prof. Dr. Jörg Henseler, Prof. Dr. Baumgarth has analyzed the development of the Ottobock brand from a product orientation to a brand management and brand orientation to a co-creation approach in a single case study. The analysis shows, among other things, that co-creation is only meaningful and successful if the brand is professionally managed and strongly anchored in the corporate culture. Without this strong foundation co-creation can lead to a weakening of brands. Therefore, it is recommended to first to do your homework and take your employees with you before the brand is actively opened to all other stakeholders.

Summer Semester at the Berlin School of Economics and Law in times of Corona

Due to the Corona Crisis the full summer semester 2020 will take place online. The pressure to act quickly is resulting in a steep learning curve for professors and students. In order to emphasize on our effort to care and stay close to each other the Berlin School of Economics and Law started an Instagram campaign accompanied by the hashtag #hereweare, which I am happy to support.