Chapter 4 Branding the Arts and Entertainment

Abstract

Given the extraordinary changes in the global business environment within the past ten years, the pressures on arts and entertainment organisations to adapt are enormous. For example, as we saw in Chapter 2, the digital revolution has brought radical changes to many businesses in the creative and cultural industries, creating significant opportunities and threats for producers. The issues raised by this turbulent environment include intellectual property protection, user-led innovation, new routes to market for producers, celebrity culture, the power of online audience or fan communities, as well as multi-channel and multi-platform marketing — and the growth in the use of branding discourse within the arts and entertainment sector. This chapter explores the idea of arts and entertainment brands and branding in the context of the sector’s turbulent operating environment. Within this context, it continues to investigate the changing relationships between arts and entertainment consumers and producers. To talk of branding in relation to the arts (though less so entertainment) runs the risk of being accused of applying neo-liberal ideology to the sacred, and of daubing the altar of culture with the filthy marks of lucre. However, branding discourse has already penetrated the world of arts and entertainment. Arguably,a better line of resistance is to point to the culturalist idea of brands as signs. When speaking of culture in relation to the arts and entertainment, we are therefore on home territory and able to mobilise a range of constructs and arguments which help to frame a critical view of branding in this area. This chapter attempts this very line of resistance.