JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

The importance of branding has been recognized for a long time in the business. During the last decades also other areas have utilized branding. Usually brands are connected to the long-term value, but there are several business situations where brands are used in temporally restricted conditions. Examples of those are single or recurrent branded campaigns. Varied temporal dimensions have been used in the business research. However, there is no much research on branding from the temporality point of view. The aim of this study is to better understand branding in campaigns, which have temporal restrictions. The phenomenon is approached from three directions. At first, there are studied different brand definitions. In this study the brand is understood as social and dynamic interaction process among stakeholders. Through this process, differentiating attributes and added value are associated with the brand. Another aspect is the temporality theory. In addition to standardized and horizontal time, also episodic and vertical time dimensions are concerned. These are merged with the brand definition to provide the theoretical framework. The brand is added to the temporal view as a process containing events, which are points of vertical dimension, brand interaction. The third approach is through the context of this study, health and political campaigns. They are selected because of their different temporal nature. Health campaigns represent usually single, non-recurrent campaigns, while political campaigns are cyclic and periodic. The campaigns are studied conducting the integrative literature research. The systematic process of searching and evaluating articles is followed by the thematic analysis. The analysis is based on themes included to the theoretical framework: brand, interaction among stakeholders and temporality. The findings of this study show that branding in temporally restricted campaigns is done in phases. There are different objectives and forms of the brand interaction in the each phase. The study also provides a classification for stakeholders for describing different interaction in the phases. Different stakeholder groups participate to brand interaction during the pre- and post-campaign periods, while all groups are participating during the campaign period. The campaign related events can be divided to major and minor. The major events define the periods and the phases of the campaigns, while minor events occur during the periods, but are affecting to the brand.