Presentation given at the 3rd International Consumer Brand Relationships Conference, www.consumer-brand-relationships.org Copyright by Rossella C. Gambetti, Universitá Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy Silvia Biraghi, Universitá Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy Don E. Schultz, Northwestern University, USA Guendalina Graffigna, Universitá Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy

1. III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
BRAND WARS: CONSUMER-BRAND ENGAGEMENT
AS CLIENT-AGENCY BATTLE FIELD
Rossella C. Gambetti ∙ Silvia Biraghi ∙ Don E. Schultz ∙ Guendalina Graffigna
International Postgraduate Master in Corporate Communication
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

2. INTRODUCTION
●Building positive and long-lasting CBR engaging consumers (Cova
1997; Fournier 1998; Keller 2009; Fournier, Breazeale, and Fetscherin 2012) is
currently a priority
●Consumers are more and more elusive and want to be the
protagonists of the relationship with the brand
●Brands need to create an experiential and relational environment
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

3. CBE AS EN EMERGING FACET IN THE CBR DOMAIN
Consumer-Brand Engagement
a psychological state that occurs as a result of various interactive
consumer brand experiences (Brodie et al, 2011)
●Recent advent in marketing literature (ARF 2006)
●Key driver of consumer behaviour and brand equity (Brodie et al, 2011; Gambetti
and Graffigna, 2010; Hollebeek, 2011)
●Lack of a unitary definition, fragmented perspectives, theoretically controversial
●Implicit knowledge rooted in daily brand practices
● Misalignment and tensions between CBE actors
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

4. CBE AS A CRITICAL TERRITORY
Consumer-Brand Engagement
as a potential amplifier
of traditional client-agency conflicts
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

5. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
getting an insight into
the critical issues in the conflicting dialogues
between marketing managers and agency professionals
●to explore how clients and agencies currently conceive and pursue their
relationships to develop CBE activities
●to confront and contrast their sensitivities and priorities in managing consumer-
brand relationships that generate CBE
●to depict a unifying and anchored in the field conceptual framework capable of
bridging and organizing the different managerial concerns between the client and
agency in achieving CBE.
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

6. METHOD
●Quali-quantitative study: systematically and interpretively explores and
contrasts the views, sensitivities, and managerial logics of clients and agencies
●Data collection: open ended qualitative in-depth interviews with a
purposive sample of 8 brand/marketing managers and 11 agency professionals
multiplicity of experiences
●Data analysis: semantic and lexicographic software-based content
analysis of the integral transcripts (T-lab) combined with an iterative
interpretive analysis of the research material
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

7. CBE AS CLIENT-AGENCY BATTLE FIELD (SEMANTIC AND LEXICOGRAPHIC
ANALYSIS)
VISUALIZING THE BATTLE FIELD
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

8. “Realism in branding could help
engagement a great deal, because when a
brand says “I have also problems, these
are my weaknesses….I’m like you”, then
the brand is the coolest guy because it’s
more credible”
“Your marketing plan should be alive. You
can’t just check your efficacy after the
campaign, this is just too late. You need to
change things in the due course, to adjust
everything according to the feedback
gathered from dialogues with consumers”
CBE as client-agency battle field (interpretive analysis)
Deliberate or emergent strategy? The courage of truth to build credibility
●Agencies blame clients for their lack
of courage in putting themselves into
question toward equalitarian dialogue
●…humaninzing the brand and its
weaknesses
●…dropping the tendency to fall in love
with products and deliberate desk-
defined strategies toward an
emergent field-driven approach
to CBR
●…accepting the risk of not being for
everybody
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

9. CBE AS CLIENT-AGENCY BATTLE FIELD (INTERPRETIVE ANALYSIS)
ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD: THE SEDUCTIVE POWER OF “CREATIVE
COOLNESS”
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
● Clients blame agencies for their
professional inadequacy in their
lust for creative experimentation and
fame
● …treating them as executors of
briefs rather than. brand image
ambassadors
● …pushing to reconcile consistency
with the brand with the creative
philosophy
“You need to find professionals who know
how to listen to brand needs, where to go
and how to fill the gap […] but there are no
professionals, they seem to be all amateurs
thrown into the fray or creative stars
longing for Cannes awards”
“Ideally my agency should be my partner
because agency takes the brand around
with communication initiatives and acts as
the spokesperson of the brand. The brand
is the signature of agency ideas. But
agencies are seldom capable of acting like
partners”
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

10. CBE as client-agency battle field (interpretive analysis)
The organizational traps of brand decision-making
Lack of integration and polygamy
in C-AR translate into a
dramatic loss of “time to action
Living “in the time of pitches”
implies missing the whole picture
of the brand heritage at the expense of
the design of a branding strategy deeply
coherent with the brand values and
relevant to consumers to engage them
FAILING TO DEVELOP A
GENUINE RELATIONSHIP
CULTURE
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
Gaps in brand management process:
●Client self-referential brand
attitude: inadequacy of organizational
structures and business models, rigid
and bureaucratic workflow hindering
fast brand-related decision-making,
outdated models focused on market
control
●Agency hyper-fragmentation
and specialization: exasperated
parcelization of brand communication
design and implementation processes,
individual self-celebrating actors
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

11. DISCUSSION ● A SPIRAL OF TENSIONS
●Emergence of CBE as a driving priority in branding strategies has amplified and
exacerbated C-A conflicts due to a dramatic lack of reciprocal understanding in
how to manage CBR
●Misunderstandings do not underpin a different conception of CBE, rather, they stem
from self-referential and opposing business logics which hinder the synergistic
potential challenged by the existence of different frames of reference in defining the
success of brand strategies
●Contrasts in C-AR nurture a dangerous spiral of misunderstandings and ambiguities
regarding the requirements and expectations associated with each other’s role
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

12. DISCUSSION ● UNCOVERING A NETWORK-BASED RELATIONAL PATTERN
●To overcome the dichotomous business logics, clients and agencies should realize
that CBE is not to be meant as a “party of two” relational territory, rather as a fuzzy
interactive space where consumers have a leading role in activating a flow
of relationships that continuously forces clients and agencies to reconfigure the
structure and meaning of their relational exchanges
●The traditional linear relationship patterns of dyads of actors must be overcome
evolving into a network-based relational pattern of a continuous multidirectional
and fluid relational territory.
●In that territory, the “brand wars” tensions taking place in the CBE “battle field” may
be resolved by applying an interactive relational logic which starts from a
shared outside-in market perspective (Schultz, 1993; Kitchen et al, 2004; Kliatchko,
2008; Laurie and Mortimer, 2011) that is consumer-centric
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

13. DISCUSSION ● AN OUTSIDE-IN PERSPECTIVE TO CBR
●In that territory, brand is conceived as an overarching symbolic and value-based
infrastructure as a network interconnector that allows a continuing cross-
fertilization of clients’, agencies’, and consumers’ meaning-making perspectives
●Societal conception of CBE that is not merely a marketing objective to be
achieved, rather a social project of communal building of brand value and meaning-
making.
●That network perspective may potentially drive a shift from CBE meant as a “brand
war battle field” amplifying conflicts in the attempt to “conquer” consumers, to a “co-
constructed social territory” hosting consumers, clients, and agencies who are
interconnected by the brand in a parenthetic dialogic relationship.
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

14. METHODOLOGICAL AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS
●This socially co-constructed view of CBE due to its novelty and its resistance to
traditional deductive and hypothesis-driven research stances, calls for the adoption of
a flexible and field-driven research approach
●Developing and implementing a mutually beneficial CBE focus for clients and
agencies is a major undertaking
●The network-based view of the relationships activated in the CBE territory among the actors
highlights that neither the client nor the agency should try to get control over the message exchange
with consumers
●CBE can provide a common, external view of the purpose of the marketing communication activities.
Viewing developed materials from the customer perspective, rather than that of the client or agency,
provides a common platform for evaluation
●The use of CBE discussions must start at the time of the client-agency engagement. Frank and
clear discussions about the goals of the marketer and that of the agency must be conducted
●Many of the challenges in developing effective CBE programs are based on the reward structures of
both the marketing organization and the agency. Incentives and rewards for both the client and the
agency should be established early through common agreement.
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, GraffignaIII International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28
Sept 2013, Winter Park Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna

15. rossella.gambetti@unicatt.it
silvia.biraghi@unicatt.it
dschultz@northwestern.edu
guendalina.graffigna@unicatt.it
III International Consumer-Brand Relationship Colloquium ● 26-28 Sept 2013, Winter Park
Gambetti, Biraghi, Schultz, Graffigna
International Postgraduate Master in Corporate Communication Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore