Proceedings | Entrepreneurship area | Year 2019
 

An interpretive enquiry into the creation of a CEO personal brand and stakehoder engagement via social media

by Khanyapuss Punjaisri; S.F.S. Alwi; K. Kajewski
  
  the 48th Annual Conference for the European Marketing Academy in Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

Social media has altered the corporate communication environment. Organisations have put their CEOs on social media to build image and create a strong personal brand. However, creating a personal brand online is complicated and problematic, especially when the personal brand serves various stakeholders. While CEOs become recognised as a brand, little research has explored how a CEO personal brand can be created and what impacts it has on stakeholders. To address these questions, this study adopted a multi-method research, combining qualitative in-depth interviews with netnography to understand CEO personal branding from both a CEO’s and stakeholders’ perspectives. The findings indicate key CEO characteristics and employee involvement as pre-requisite to developing a CEO personal brand. Also, by bridging corporate branding and online personal branding literature, this study illustrates how a CEO personal brand influences corporate brand image, employee advocacy and consumer loyalty.

Keywords: Personal brand, Corporate brand image, Stakeholder engagement