Proceedings | Entrepreneurship area | Year 2019
 

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

by Khanyapuss Punjaisri; S.F.S. Alwi; K. Kajewski
  
  the AM Academy of Marketing in London, UK 2-4 July 2019

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