Page 95 - Parimad teadustööd 2013/2014

TALLINNA ÜLIKOOLI ÜLIÕPILASTE 2013/2014. ÕPPEAASTA PARIMAD TEADUSTÖÖD / ARTIKLITE KOgUMIK SOTSIAALTEADUSED
Managing meaning
While constructing corporate identity, communications professionals have to stay realistic and not build up something that has nothing or very little to do with reality to avoid becoming neurotic. In stating “if their brand identity and their actual corporate culture, policies, and procedures are discordant, they be- come unhealthy. As a consequence, both employee moral and credibility with customers begin to plum- met,” Mark and Pearson (2001: 42) have explained why paying no or little attention to brand identity is in particular not a good path to choose.
Taking into account the development of radical constructivism and its broader adoption in Europe, it is important for Estonian professionals to become more aware of theory and start implementing it into their practice. until today, very little has been written about the matter here and the topic needs to be more explicitly introduced to overcome the limitations of the classic understanding of communication as a conduit model.
Mark and Pearson (2001) have not found a system being developed to understand and manage the meanings of brands, no matter whether the brand was of product, service, company or causes. In my thesis I offered a set of theories that could prove to be helpful to handle meaning management more ef- fectively and more broad-based. It is relevant to shift from measuring the outward expressions of beliefs and attitudes to actually understanding the inward processes and real behavioral cause behind (van Praet 2012) constructing corporate identity. As Morin (2008: 4) has argued “hyper-specialization tore up and fragmented the complex fabric of reality, and led to the belief that the fragmentation inflicted on reality was reality in itself ”.
My work focused on why managing meaning and developing brand identity that will share patterns in customer perception could be beneficial to a business. I argue that it is not just a matter of a single campaign, but rather it is the red tape that should bind together all the aspects of the company including management, policies, procedures, culture, etc., as they all communicate of and about the organization. Instead of drowning ones stakeholders under a tsunami of advertisements and other push communica- tions handling corporate identity based on theories of complexity and radical constructivism would be more appropriate, to bridge with patterns in customers’ mind.
Archetypes come handy
Organizations lack knowledge on what to build their identity in order to better meet their clients’ expec- tations and to enjoy a competitive advantage. Mark and Pearson as ambassadors of archetypical branding (2001: 45) are sure acknowledging the archetypes “provides a kind of telescope to help you see the pat- terns that unify the “stars” in the branding world. Without a system, you may not see these patterns-or you may connect the dots in ways that are unique to you, but that do not resonate with the others”. I agree based on Balmer (2012) that the suggestions given by Mark and Pearson are not limited only to brand- ing, but they should go deeply into the organization, covering all aspects of it including organizational culture, values, communications, management and behavior of employees as well. Based on complexity theory these do not exist in isolation in any case, so the interaction between various aspects is what influ- ences the identity perceived by stakeholders.
I will not go into detail explaining the essence of each archetype, as this is not relevant from our aca- demic interest point of view and I do not see it fit here. Most important is that there are such patterns that are unique and shared by everyone (Jung 1991). We do not need to learn or acquire those archetypes, they are already within our mind. What we can do, as communication professionals, is to learn to use them better in order to ease up communication and deliver a message. Information that does not click with our existing knowledge or patterns is most likely to be abandoned. So if branding is done so that it does not play on the strings of our conscious, it is most likely to float by. Mark and Pearson (2001: 14) confirm “An archetypal product identity speaks directly to the deep imprint within the consumer, sparking a sense of recognition and of meaning” so building the rest on it could be the piece of the puzzle which has been missing. Referring to Holland (1995) Palmaru (2012) is also of the opinion that our consciousness has a limited amount of schemata as a result of natural choice, tested by time and as a result of learning from
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