Brands are mediators. It means that brands intercede the demand and supply of products by co-ordinating the use of information. We are said to live in a ‘brand society’ where brands have become a new way of organizing production and managing consumption. There are, however, several possible actors influencing the symbolic message conveyed by a brand. Corporations, consumers as well as mediators (such as critics and agents) and the cultural industry are suggested to be so-called ‘co-authors’ of significance. Understanding branding as a verb, that is taking interest in the process of branding, the project focus questions such as: How do brands as an interface re-structure interaction between stakeholders? How do co-authoring of importance take place and why?

The aim of the study is to scrutinize the making of brands by analysing the interactivity of crucial stakeholders that become co-authors, following interpretative and constructivist methodological traditions. The project includes three cases: 1) Internet, as a technology for exploiting and co-authoring a brand 2) popular culture, illustrating literature as interactive in the process of branding and 3) politics/ideology, revealing how ideals in society reason and resonate with the co-authoring of brands.