Programme: MA Brand Development Department of Media and Communications Course: Branding 1: History, contexts and practice MC71110A Course

e leader: Dr. Liz Moor

How do changes in media and technology affect relationships between brands and consumers? With what kinds of consequences?

Wordcount: 5489 Thomas Dekeyser Student number: 33227990

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Numerous how-to marketing articles and books have been written on the influence of the 'new consumer' on contemporary brand management. The question hereby rises to what extent these assumptions are substantiated. It is crucial to analyze this matter as a complex ongoing technological, social and economical process. In our postmodern society, new technologies and media have risen, not without influences on contemporary marketing practices. This essay defines new media as digital and interactive media, as offered by Lister et al (2009). From a different perspective, Lash (2002) defines this concept as a transformation of representational media into presentational media, focusing on the flattening of meaning. From the 1980s onwards, theorists started recognizing alterations in the landscape of conventional mass media, heavily connected to technological developments as data transmission, cable television and magnetic recording. But not only have new media been established (for instance online communities and mobile devices), old media have also refashioned themselves into new media (for instance digital television and online press publishing). As media are the platforms brands utilize to talk to their consumer, the development of new media and technologies is of great signifance to brands. Theorists as Arvidsson (2006) and Cova and Dalli (2009) discuss the altered relationship between brands and consumers. It can be argued that while creating brand value, consumers are nowadays more empowered than ever. The idea of the traditional consumer as 'viewer' of media is transformed into one of the consumer as 'user' of media. Brands are challenged to cope with the modified connection with the consumer. Cova and Dalli (2009: 321) argue 'consumers create circumstances to which companies can/must respond'. The breakthrough of new media and technologies ignite concepts as co-creation, consumer surveillance, database marketing, relationship marketing, face-to-profile interactivitiy and social media monitoring. Due to new media's interactive identity, consumers are able to participate in the process of production, thereby contributing to contemporary product and marketing strategies of value-creation (Cova and Dalli, 2009). But Cova and Dalli (2009) argue that consumers are recurrently corrupted because of their double exploited position. Simultaneously, the user-generated platforms enable consumers to 'control' brands, often not in line with a brand's previsioned marketing strategy. The latter raises various questions on contemporary brand management. Firstly, this essay will delineate the recent changes in media and technology (from 1980s onwards), while putting them in a broader context and focusing on developments that are

relevant to brands. We will be looking at both established readings such as books by McLuhan and recent books and articles by for instance Lister et al and Manovich. Are new and old media entangled or can we speak of distinctive entities? How have old media reacted to verdant developments? This essay will then focus on how the identiy of these claimed innovations are affecting the relationship between consumer and producer. It will analyze Cova and Dalli's claim of brands as shared cultural property and new consumer roles, but foremost, it will consider whether we can genuinely acknowledge the concept of the 'empowered consumer' or if the division between consumers and brands remains unchanged, thus referring to post-Marxist discourses. While present throughout the essay, the ending part will focus on scrutinizing brand's reactions on the described altered relationship between consumer and producer, focusing on the concept of co-creation and data mining practices. Lastly we briefly offer some prospectives on future technological and media developments concomitant its brand reactions. Changes in media and technology With the transmission into a postmodern society, in many ways from the 1980s onwards, new modern technologies and media arose and are continuously rising. It is essential not to regard technological and media development as separate entities, as they are perpetually accompanied by institutional, cultural, economical and social historical changes (Firat and Dholakia, 2006). Recent and ongoing dynamic transitions from the 1960s onwards to a postindustrial world of globalisation with decentralised notions of power and control, are highly associated with changes in technology and media (Lister et al, 2009). As McLuhan argued, new technologies and media to be defined as machines as further extensions of human communication (McLuhan, 1964). They are not only affected by social, cultural and economical issues, they mutually influence them. As argued by Lister et al, new media and technology are not a marking-off from previous eras, but part of a broad technoculture (Lister et al, 2009). It is relevant to briefly analyze technology before interpreting new media, because technology and media are thoroughly connected since, as argued by Wiebel (cited in Lister et al, 2009), the roots of new media developments repeatedly lay in new technologies. Think of the discovery of the electron, magnetic recording and cathode raytubes (beginning 20th century) as the bases for visual media as film and television. In similar ways, the development of silicon chips, transistors and integrated circuits (mid 20th century) are regarded as the roots of

the personal computer (1980s). The latter is, together with the technological development of fibre-wired and wireless Internet connectivity, highly associated with the birth of 'new media' (Wiebel, cited in Lister et al, 2009). This leads us to the argument that the invention of new technologies is never unrelated to previous discoveries since they form the fundamental roots, thereby, we state 'new' as a relative term (Marvin, stated in Stafford and Faber, 2005). Nevertheless, new technologies not evolving into new media, may still affect the consumerproducer relationship. There is plenty of evidence to support this, for example RadioFrequence Identification (RFID), open-graph technologies and other data-mining technologies are enduringly advancing database marketing, surveillance practices and monitoring opportunities. According to Lash (2002), we have moved from representational media to presentational media. So called 'old media' as novels, poems and cinema serve a deep lyrical and narrative meaning while demanding reflection and engagement. The representational media offer a long duration of value, while presentational media as newspapers, television and magazines, are based on immediate information consumption. With his theory, Lash implies a flattening of cultural meaning and rise of pervasive 'information machines' that combine technology and informational content (Lash, 2002). Hence, both Lash and McLuhan define 'new media' as the roots for an information society 'without interpretation, even without ideology [...]' (Lash, 2002: 73). The described theory regards some media types e.g. newspapers, television and radio - as new media, based on their claimed lack of narrative and representational purposes. Accordingly, for Lash, from 'old' to 'new' means a shift from carriers of authentic meaning to carriers of ephemeral messages. Investigating 'representational forms' more intrinsically, it is arguable if the question of meaningful narrative content is determined by the type of medium. On one hand, in the case of photography, Lash excludes forms such as snapshot and documentating photography, which may lack a profound lyrical meaning. Internet-based media on the other hand, may offer crowdsourced narratives that reach further than the majority of cinema movies. The immediacy of new media therefore not unconditionally evolves into inconsequential content. Thus, to define new media, we follow the description offered by Lister et al: Those methods and social practices of communication, representation, and expression that have developed using the digital, multimedia, networked computer and the ways that this machine is held to have transformed work in other media: from books to movies, from telephones to television. (Lister et al, 2009: 2) Based on the latter definition, the development of the personal computer and the evolution of

Internet connectivity form the roots of new media. Thus, computer games, mobile Internetconnected devices (smartphones, tablets), social media, online blogs, 3D simulations and other digital interactive media and applications, are referred to as 'new media'. Consumers not only receive messages through new media types, they are also offered platforms for content creation, described as 'user-generated content'. As argued below, the term 'new media' is merely used to refer to digital and interactive media, not to allege a disconnected detachment from 'old media'. 'Digital' characterizes new media, in the sense that they are based on the shift from physical objects to stored and processed numbers (Lister et al, 2009). 'Interactivity', also characterizing new media, ascribes an active role to the previously passive viewer/reader of old media (Lister et al, 2009), offering them the 'power to archive, annotate, appropriate and recirculate media products' (Jenkins cited in Lister et al, 2009: 35). Following the idea of convergence offered by Jenkins, we foresee the development of a 'black box', merging multiple technologies and media into one device (Jenkins, 2006). This prediction is plausible when examining new mobile devices such as modern smartphones and tablet devices, combining photography, telephony, Internet, gaming, press and even telecommunication facets. These recent developments may evolve further into the rise of a single technological device that replaces the use of multiple tools, each serving a specific media purpose. By referring to new media with its own language, Manovich implies a 'shift of all culture to computer-mediated forms of production, distribution, and communication' (Manovich, 2002: 19). By positing media changes as a 'shift', Manovich focuses on new media as a substitution of the old media (Manovich, 2002). In contrast to Manovich's recognition of technological and media developments as a revolution, Lister et al consider them as an evolution where the bases of new media are genuine elements of old media. According to Lister et al, we can not speak of new media as an absolute distinction with traditional analogue media. They are a continuation and extension of a principle and technique that was already in place (Lister et al, 2009). For example, think of the telegraph as a precursor to the Internet (Standage cited in Stafford and Faber, 2005). Because different types of media never exist in isolation of other media, the content of a medium is always another medium (Lister et al, 2009: 80). This concept of remediation leads us to the idea of refashioned 'old media' as response to the development of 'new media' (Bolter and Grusin, 2000). Similar to old media remediating each other (e. g. photography remediated painting), old media as television and newspaper have remediated new media (Bolter and Grusin, 2000). This argument has been further argued by Stafford and Faber stating new media never occur 'in a vacuum unrelated to the old media development [...]' (Stafford and Faber, 2005: 3). Following this concept, old media such as print, radio and television, affected by new

technological opportunities, are digitizing. Since the first photograph by Niepce in 1822, photography has evolved from analogue 35 mm film technologies (Kodak, Polaroid) to captured digital pixels, accompanied by manipulation software (Elkins, 2006). The press industry has always remediated photography, and more recently, television in hypermediated digital environments with interactive possibilities (e.g. Guardian website, their iPhone application and most recently, an integrated Facebook-plaform). In similar ways, contemporary radio channels are offering online broadcasting. But foremost, the changes within the telecommunication landscape, more specifically television, are increasingly affecting the relationship between consumer and producer. Firstly, since the 1970s the concept of 'narrowcasting' rose, from the urge to target consumers in a more personalized and consequently, more efficient way, leading to abundant new channels, originally offered by BBC2 and Channel4 (Stokes and Reading, 1999). As stated by Stokes and Reading (1999), the amount of specialized channels has been further extended due to technologies such as 'direct broadcasting by satellite' (DBS), initially introduced by Sky in 1983. Secondly, at the end of the 70s, cable television was invented resulting in improved connectivity. Thirdly, in the same era, the Video Cassette Recorder was conceived, offering the first possibility to break the scheduled flow of television viewing (Stokes and Reading, 1999). Fourthly, these first notions of personal television usage have been intensified recently by interactive digital technologies. This offers not only the freedom to personalize the experience of watching television, but furthermore to disregard commercial breaks, thoroughly shaking the established advertising model. The fifth and latest significant development is described by Stokes and Reading (1999) as Internet-based television. This merges television with the advantages of Internet connection, augmenting interactive opportunities and fully personalized usage. For example Google TV, Apple TV, TiVo and online interactive applications such as the BBC iPlayer, are not only changing the traditional television experience, they are also transforming the commercial model (Bennett and Strange, 2011). Announced in popular marketing books and articles as 'the death of the 30-second spot', by for instance Joseph Jaffe (2005), conventional media advertising seems to suffer from loss in effectiveness (Arvidsson, 2006). For example, as illustrated above, digital and Internet-based television create consumer opportunities to personalize their media usage and thereby, to avoid the traditional branded commercial (Bennett and Strange, 2011). As suggested by Williams Boddy, contemporary marketers are counter measuring this by the increasing employment of virtual billboards (in live and sport events), interactive advertising, sponsorships, infomercials, entertainment programming, product and plot placement (Boddy in Spiegel and Olsson, 2004) while focusing on 'targeting and customization tools' (Turow, 2006: 122). Associated with the culturalization of economic processes, the shift from Fordism to post-

Fordism partly consists of the 'aestheticization of everyday life through advertising, marketing, design and lifestyle imagery' (Slater and Tonkiss, 2001: 175). On account of new interactive technologies and media, as Arvidsson (2006) argues, consumers achieved a 'heightened media literacy' (Arvidsson, 2006: 76). In contrast to the era of conventional mass media, post-modern consumers become more and more media-acquainted whilst creating and utilizing their own media. The resulting media literacy arms consumers against the one-way advertising message. Hence, brands counter this by shifting from advertising to brand management (Arvidsson, 2006). Thereby, as suggested by Pine and Gilmor (1999), the emphasis on traditional commodity exchanging (and its associated mass media advertising) is replaced by attention for designing and promoting branded experiences. We may argue that the latter is based on the success of entertainment businesses as Walt Disney, providing feasible responds to the declining performance of long-established mass media advertising. The role of new media and technologies lay in the enhancement of branded experiences and spaces. Media as interactive social media platforms and multi-player gaming, and technologies such as motion-based screens, project mapping and data mining enable personalization and branded entertainment, consequently constructing and augmenting the consumer experience (Pine and Gilmor, 1999). Empowerment of the consumer? Alterations in the landscape of media and technologies affect not only social and cultural contexts, it is argued that they firmly influence the relationship between contemporary brands and consumers in multiple ways. In a post-Fordist fashion (as described above), brands market products based of lifestyle and values thus, as stated by Firat and Dholakia (cited in Cova and Dali, 2009) creating an 'experiential context' - whereas formerly, product differentation was associated with functional product benefits. Modern consumption is increasingly entangled with identity construction (Firat and Dholakia, 1998). Consumers utilize brands in the process of social value-creation by reflecting brand values on one's identity and for the construction of cultural meaning (Vargo and Lush, in Zwick et al, 2008). By becoming producers and exchangers of value, using new media and technologies, as argued by Firat and Dholakia (2006), consumers progressively mutually create economic brandvalue. The consumer is no longer the end of the value-chain but the beginning, changing the role of 'consumer' into the role of 'prosumer' (Cova and Dalli, 2009: 315). The question hereby rises whether this is a new post-modern concept, whether the product ever was an immutable ending aspect of the value chain. People have always thought of creative ways of consuming, personalizing their consumption and

influencing the product's provisional asset values (Firat and Dholakia, 2006). This argument is convincing considering consumers always affected brand perceptions by appropriating their personal social network. However, modern new media (with its interactive identity) and personalisation production technologies facilitate, accelerate and extend notions of valuecreation. Furthermore, Cova and Dalli, Arvidsson and Zwick et al argue that new media not solely modify the consumer-producer relationship within the value-chain, they also empower the consumer. As suggested by Cova and Dalli, there are multiple means, provided by technologies and web tools, giving consumers 'the possibility to voice and represent themselves' (Cova and Dalli, 2009: 321). The empowering abilities of new media lay within its inherent aspects of interactivity and user-generated content. The brand's proposition and media message were formerly regarded as an almost intangible final. Contemporary brand management 'abandons' their branded content, seeing consumers now use new media's interactive possibilities to generate new cultural and branded meanings. The option of registrational interactivity (Lister et al, 2009) and decontextualisation redirecting the context in which content originally appeared - may profoundly transform a brand's product of content and its scheduled outcome. Poorly produced media content, such as the exemplar Flea Market Montogomery advert with its deplorable acting and environment, are mocked at, thus intensifying a (questionably) adverse effect and weakening its credibility. Put succinctly, new media enable consumers to talk back to brands (Lury 2004). Besides the former, it is possible to state that as brands are increasingly becoming an essential part of the life of postmodern consumers (Firat and Dholakia, 2006), user-generated content as a mainstream activity recurrently deals with products and brands. This is common on individual bases in our daily digital creations, for example in social media streams, blogs and Youtube-channels. Consumers might express general affection or pathos towards brands (textual, photographic or videographic). To illustrate the former: in 2007 Youtube videos appeared and were intensely shared showing the presence of rats in a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in New York. In addition, consumers might create thoroughly examined product reviews, which alter the idea of product information previously strictly provided by brands, by the addition of genuine consumer-based assessments on product quality and price, while comparing to corresponding brands and their products. Hence, empowering consumers against marketing-driven consumer decisions. Moreover, marketing campaigns based on usergenerated content have to deal with campaign adbusting (Hollenbeck and Zinkhan, 2006). Taking the previous notions of individual user-generated content further, Cova and Dalli

(2009) argue consumers organize in 'consumer tribes'. The latter is based on shared positive or negative awareness towards a brand, its products and/or its activities, whilst possesing the power to question and re-appropriate them away from strategic aims. Anti-brand movements and consumer activism is heavily facilitated by the strenghts of the Internet: its low financial barrier to create platforms (blogs, forums, websites) and the vanished limitations of time and space zones (Hollenbeck and Zinkhan, 2006). On countless anti-brand platforms as Ihateryanair.org and 'I hate McDonald's' social media pages, consumers share their aversion towards a specific brand. Paradoxically, this is valuable for brand management for it offers feedback and insights on products, services and brand image. Furthermore, as claimed by Cova et al (2007, cited in Cova and Dalli, 2009) consumer tribes will in the future form the core of the disappearance of the distinctive line between brands and consumers. Examining the egalitarian optimism embracing this concept, numerous theorists e.g. Beer, Lash, Cova and Dalli - suggest it is significant to question the credibility of media and technology changes as an unadulterated empowerment of the consumer (Beer, 2009). We might argue that similar to the illusion of empowerment created in American Idol voting described by Hodgetts and Hegar (2011), consumers merely 'feel' in power. By analyzing new technologies and its effects on brand management, we might find evidence for the 'illusion' of consumer empowerment. As suggested by Wathieu et al (2002), firms provide freedom of choice (detailed product features, means of distribution and payment) to the consumer. To illustrate, the concept of 'NikeID' enables the production of a personalized shoe. While obtaining a feeling of freedom, consumers are nevertheless directed by prescribed rules and a limited set of adaptable elements. This was proven when a NikeID's customer was neglected for requesting the word 'Sweatshop' on his personalized shoe (Lury, 2004). As argued by Wathieu et al, also the question rises whether this claimed freedom evolves into genuine consumer satisfaction (Wathieu et al, 2002). It is therefore possible to suggest (as argumented by Fuchs, 2010) that the roots of consumer empowerment immutably lay in a capitalist-driven environment, for the sole purpose is to maximize benefits while claiming notions of freedom. Post-Marxist ideas by Negri and Hardt (2001), Lazzarato (1996) and Fuchs (2010) suggest brands exploit 'community, affect and communicative flows' (Arvidsson, 2006: 91) by 'putting the consumer to work' (Zwick et al, 2008). In numerous ways, while being 'empowered', consumers create cultural and affective value that is appropriated by marketers. In spite of being a new concept, Arvidsson (2006) and Lazzarato (1996) argue that new media and technologies create co-creation opportunities that incorporate the consumer's entire productive capacity. However, in addition to previous writings (2006) acknowledging this issue, Arvidsson and Colleoni argue that new media,

more particularly social media, form rather the solution to redistribution of financial value than the source of this portrayed Marxist class division (in press, 2011). Additionally, the thoughts on the illusion of consumer empowerment can be taken further when describing new technologies as providing power to the producer. The formerly acknowledged user-generated content is appraised by brand monitoring tools, providing previously unattainable consumer information. In addition, as argued by Elmer, technologies offer new ways of surveillance contributing to data-driven information of the consumer (Elmer, 2004), whereas as argued by Graham (2004, cited in Beer, 2009), consumers are often unaware of its existence. Because consumer information means knowledge and knowledge means power, new technologies engender notions of an empowered producer. Thus, the discourse on 'consumer empowerment' by new media and technologies is strongly affected by post-Marxist paradigms on the 'illusion of consumer empowerment', stating consumer empowerment as a 'docile and managed form of consumer life desired by capital' (Zwick et al, 2008: 185-186). Further implications for brand management As cited repeatedly above, new technologies and media impinge the relationship between consumer and producer, thereby creating both opportunities and challenges for marketing practices, such as the discussed changes in the landscape of television media. Along with the transformation from Fordism to post-Fordism in the economy, Fordist marketing is continuously evolving into brand management that focuses on brand experiences (Arvidsson, 2006). This is recognized by theorists as Firat and Dholakia stating 'marketing is a partnership with the post-consumers/performers to enable them to construct meaning and experiences' (Firat and Dholakia, 2006: 155). The composed value can be appropriated by brand managers in multiple ways by putting the consumers to work (Zwick et al, 2008). By using existing social networks in the target group, brands hope to produce 'word-of-mouth' that contributes to the distribution of the brand image. To achieve personal objectives, such as constructing a social identity (Cova and Dalli, 2009), consumers allocate brands and its branded content to reflect a brand image on one's personal desired identity. To illustrate, consumers redistributing the viral 'PC guy vs Mac guy' commercial on social media platforms, attempt to portray the brand's rebellious and creative image on one's identity. Marketers address influential consumers with a rich social capital, often bloggers or celebrities, to distribute branded content or review products and services. Despite not being a new concept, it is possible to argue that interactive media multiply the word-of-mouth effect

of both favorable and unfavorable user-generated content, hence creating not only opportunities, but also challenges for contemporary brand management (Arvidsson, 2006). As suggested by numerous theorists (Arvidsson, 2006; Cova and dalli, 2009; Zwick et al, 2008), it is moreover possible to provide 'ambiences that set consumers free to produce and share technical, social and cultural knowledge' (Zwick et al, 2008: 184). The co-creation economy activates consumers as creative and playful co-production of the manufacturing process. Cova and Dalli argue that we may not speak of co-producing, but rather of immaterial work as a donation to the market (Cova and Dalli, 2009). By transforming consumers into producers, modern brand management turns cultural labour into monetary value. In the first stage, brands invite consumers to obtain an active role in corporate processes by focusing on its social, financial and cultural value. In the second stage, convenient open platforms are provided where consumers provide ideas on multiple levels of the production process (Zwick et al, 2008). When focusing on the relationship between producers and consumers, Zwick et al (2008) and Cova and Dalli (2009) acknowledge the formerly described exploitation of human labour. Cova and Dalli (2009) provide evidence for the concept of double exploitation, defined as an asymmetrical relationship between working consumers and producers by claiming a dishonoust allocation of benefits and market value. Moreover, when the market value increases, the prosumer agrees on paying more for the advanced product (Cova and Dali, 2009). For brands to avoid this situation of double exploitation, the proposition of social, material and economic benefits is of great significance. As maintained by Lazaratto (2009), the concept of co-creation implicates issues on intellectual property for the production process is taken outside the traditional in-factory production process. Where product innovation and development is based on co-created ideas, common goods exclude the option of 'exclusive property' (Lazaratto, 2004: 199). Besides, intellectual property rights are to be appropriated correctly as an incentive for cognitive co-production initiatives. Apart from the allocation of value surplus (Arvidsson, 2006), contemporary brand management increasingly advances new technologies as means of knowledge production in both the physical and the virtual space. Arvidsson (2004, in Zwick and Knott, 2009) refers to this augmentation as an adequate response to the ubiquitous mobilisation of the consumer and its cluttered media routines. In the physical space, tracking technologies (such as RFID) are used to capture information on daily consumer behaviour (Lury, 2004). For instance, transactional data from loyalty cards, credit cards and location-based services (for instance Foursquare) is used to provide personalized offers. In the future, according to theorists as Sterling (2005) and Dodge and Kitchim (2008) (both cited in Beer, 2009), more and more

'coded objects' (provided with RFID-tags) will rise and contribute to a heightened information intensive society by a strengthened entanglement of reality and virtuality (Beer, 2009). This account on consumer surveillance is taken further in the virtual space. Brands utilize social media monitoring tools to analyze user-generated content and to interact with users. By providing knowledge and consumer insights, these tools provide inspiring sources for innovation, product development and service encountering. As argued by Lury, online media use mapping technologies as 'cookies' to track consumer habits, preferences and personal information (Lury, 2004). Negroponte (1995, cited in Zwick and Knott, 2009: 228) states the latter as an inescapable consequence of 'being digital'. After the flow of information is tracked and organized, data profiles are electronically created, thus enhancing consumer segmentation (Zwick and Knott, 2009). Data-mining and profiling is highly associated with privacy issues, particularly when these concepts contribute to undesirable personalized content (Goss, 2003). But as Zwick and Knott (2009) suggest, profiles are related to data, for marketers are not interested in identified consumers. This means that, as suggested by Lury (2004), the term 'face-to-face communication' is obsolete and replaced by 'face-to-profile communication'. Elmer explains that profiles are asigned for personalized advertising, event messages and product offers, in order to achieve a higher consumer reponse (Elmer, 2004). As an illustration, data-mining practices by Facebook offer categories (based on past 'likes', profile information and user-generated content) which are appropriated by marketers for personalized marketing, partly as a reaction to the formerly described declining competence of conventional media advertising. For Lury (2004), our daily life decisions are touched mapped profiles, as our past behavior and desires determine the content of future messages and offers (Lury, 2004). Besides the former, Beer (2009) suggests that the contemporary recommendation culture based on algorithms e.g. Last.fm and Amazon recommendations is impairing aspects of personal control on reality, such as taste in music and literature. Based on 'the power through the algorithm' (Lash, 2007; Beer, 2009), it is possible to insist that the data-infrastructures (and other consumer surveillance technologies) funded and owned by capitalist organisations, providing consumer information intensify the empowerment of the producer. As a response to the omnipresence of the surveillance economy, Turow (2006) highlights accounts on marketing discrimination, where being positioned within a specific disadvantageous profile category, may emerge price and offer discrimination. Additionally, providing plentiful personal information often privat, hence evoking disucssions on privacy (Goss, 2003) - results in beneficial personalized product offers. The consumer knowledge often tracked beyond the consumer's awareness (Turow, 2006; Graham, stated in Beer, 2009),

divides the most unrewarding e.g. consumers that return too much purchases - from the most profitable customers (Zwick and Knott, 2009). As Turow (2006) acknowledges, consumers might provide false information in order to redeem the best offers. Nevertheless, we may argue that despite the fact that data-mining practices are taking it a step further, price discrimination is not a new complication as it pre-existed in traditional markets; only based on differents aspects. Based on historical and current developments, it is possible to argue that the media and technological changes experienced nowadays will be heavily extended in the future decades. Turow argues that media as television, video games and radio in the near future will remediate Internet's accounts on targeted tracking, interactivity and customization (Turow, 2006). Furthermore, we foresee, as suggested by Sterling (2005), an augmentation of RFIDtagged objects in the physical space that will enable a further extended surveillance of the consumer. In terms of media, as seen in for instace Microsoft's Future vision 2019, digital interfaces and augmented reality will continue to merge in reality, thus corroborating the rise of intelligent environments and artificial intelligence (Suchman, 2007). Brands will allocate these intelligent environments as potential technologies for data-tracking and product (and marketing) customization. Also, analyzing this in the context of post-Fordist marketing, new technologies are e.g. 3D simulations, project mapping and Xbox Kinect's motion-based applications - and will keep on being employed to produce branded experiences. Based on the current smart devices (smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices) and theories on 'media convergence', we will accept the omnipresence of a hypermediated black box (Jenkins, 2006). These developments will unlock opportunities for intensified location-based marketing services and tailor-made product offers for the increasingly mobilised consumer (Arvidsson, in Zwick and Knott, 2009). In terms of the consumer-producer relationship, the substance of empowerment of the consumer to personalize and affect products and production processes, is weakened by the heightened notions of knowledge and the associated, possibly Foucaldian, power of the producer. Conclusion Whilst analyzing new media and technology developments, we have, throughout this essay, focused on its implications for brand management, which in a post-Fordist manner, increasingly endeavors branded experiences. From the 80s onwards, media theorists have been recognizing fluctuations in the traditional media landscape. While new technologies and media rose, the conventional mass media were (and continue) losing marketing efficiency.

Following discourses offered by Lister et al (2009), we have argued that based on the invention of the personal computer and later on, the uprise of Internet connectivity, digital and interactive media emerged. However, the evolution from 'old' to 'new' media is not regarded as a substitution, but as an extension and process of remediation. At the same time, by focusing on alterations in the television environment, we have provided evidence for the remediation of new media by old media. This essay continued by questioning the suggested concept of 'empowerment of the consumer' as a result of the recent media-related and technological changes. On one hand, consumers gain heightened notions of power as they are offered user-generated platforms to 'talk back' (Lury, 2004) to brands, and moreover, to affect the brand's values and, in the case of cocreation, the manufacturing process. Yet, on the other hand, following post-Marxist discourses, the abstract phenomenon of 'consumer empowerment' may be regarded as rather an 'illusion of consumer empowerment'. Brands allocate the consumer's empowerment by 'putting the consumer to work' (Zwick et al, 2008). Furthermore, new surveillance technologies are appropriated to utilize the freedom of the consumer by turning it into data, and therefore, into knowledge. This knowledge is then appropriated to generate personalized branded content and tailor-made product offers. It is then possible to state that while seemingly providing the consumer means to 'voice and represent themselves' (Cova and Dalli, 2009: 321), new media and technologies benefit the producer to the same, or maybe even greater, extent. We may then ask the question whether consumers are fully aware of the described surveillance practices and to what extent it is expedient for both consumer and producer. When acknowledging the changes during the last decades, it is possible to envision a further virtualisation of the physical space, which will not only contribute to an intensified and ubiquitous surveillance of the consumer, but moreover, will bring about ontological issues, reaching far beyond brand management.

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