Bram Koster - The Definition of A Social Media Strategy

The Definition of a
Corporate Social Media Strategy
Bram Koster
The Definition of a Corporate Social Media Strategy
Bram Koster
br@mkoster.com
A thesis submitted to obtain the degree of
Master of Marketing Management
at
Erasmus University Rotterdam / SRM
January 2008
Reviewers:
Koen Hazewinkel
Drs. Okke Postmus
The Definition of a Corporate Social Media Strategy 3
1 Abstract
Social media have given voice to internet users through a number of technological, social,
economic and legal developments. The users are taking that opportunity to make themselves
heard: it is expected that in three years time 70% of the online content will be user-
generated. Some of that content is targeted at companies and their products & services. This
behavior of users, either favorable or not, is making it harder for these companies to control
their brands, as their own messaging is mixed with the users’ messaging about these brands.
To understand how this brand messaging works, this thesis will draw on complexity theory,
social network theory and social capital theory to investigate communications in complex
systems in general, to explain the role of social media in those communications and the
impact of social media on brands and corporate brands in particular.
Finally, it will describe how companies can organize their corporate branding to cope with
social media and external complexity.
2 Table of contents
1 Abstract ..........................................................................................................................................3
2 Table of contents ..........................................................................................................................4
3 Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................6
4 Introduction...................................................................................................................................7
5 Social media ...................................................................................................................................8
5.1 Definition of social media ................................................................................................8
5.2 Types of social media........................................................................................................9
5.2.1 Weblogs................................................................................................................9
5.2.2 Wikis .....................................................................................................................9
5.2.3 Social networks .................................................................................................10
5.2.4 Sharing services.................................................................................................10
5.2.5 Podcasts..............................................................................................................10
5.2.6 Virtual worlds....................................................................................................10
5.3 Social media visitors ........................................................................................................11
5.4 Social media contributors...............................................................................................11
5.5 Properties of social media ..............................................................................................12
5.6 Impact of social media on corporate brands...............................................................15
5.6.1 Collaborative behavior.....................................................................................15
5.6.2 Socially constructive behavior ........................................................................16
5.6.3 Aggressive, destructive behavior....................................................................16
6 Complexity and network theory – an introduction...............................................................17
6.1 Complexity theory ...........................................................................................................17
6.2 Network theory................................................................................................................18
6.2.1 Small-world effect.............................................................................................18
6.2.2 Clustering ...........................................................................................................19
6.2.3 Scale-free networks...........................................................................................19
6.2.4 Assortative degree correlations.......................................................................20
6.3 The internet as complex adaptive network..................................................................20
7 Communications in complex systems .....................................................................................24
7.1 Opinion leaders vs. brokers ...........................................................................................25
7.2 Influentials and opinion formation...............................................................................27
7.2.1 Cascades of influence.......................................................................................28
7.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................29

8 Social media in complex networks...........................................................................................31
8.1 The role of the internet in complex networks ............................................................31
8.2 Social media as weak tie hubs ........................................................................................32
8.3 Information push and pull in social media..................................................................33
8.3.1 Information push: social media as facilitators of information cascades ..33
8.3.2 Information pull: social media as information archive...............................34
9 Branding in complex networks.................................................................................................35
9.1 Branding as a complex concept.....................................................................................35
9.2 Social aspect of branding................................................................................................36
9.3 A branding strategy for complex networks .................................................................37
9.3.1 Messaging...........................................................................................................37
9.3.2 Monitoring .........................................................................................................38
9.3.3 Alternative messaging ......................................................................................38
9.3.4 Consistency........................................................................................................38
9.3.5 Organization......................................................................................................39
9.4 Corporate branding in complex networks...................................................................39
9.4.1 Corporate reputation management................................................................40
9.4.2 Corporate brand PR .........................................................................................41
9.4.3 Corporate brand architecture..........................................................................42
10 References ...........................................................................................................................43
3 Acknowledgements
Writing a thesis is a complex process, requiring the input and support of many. My thanks go
out to:
Koen for his help in defining the subject and scope of this thesis, his guidance and his
support,
Arno for reading along and giving feedback,
Thomas and Guy-Manuel for keeping me alive throughout most of the writing,
Susan for her support and for letting me neglect her for too long without complaining,
and Kiki for her smiles.

4 Introduction
Social media have empowered normal people by enabling them to easily share information
and opinions. Some of this information will be about companies, their products and services,
and their brands. This information dilutes the information that the company provides itself,
influencing the brand image.
Therefore, it is important for any company to understand the impact social media can have
on its branding efforts. This thesis will try to answer questions such as “How do opinions
from users influence other users’ brand perceptions?”, “What is the role of social media in
this?”, “Can social media be used to spread the brand identity?”, “How should companies
organize to cope with social media?”, etc.
The answers to these questions will help answer the central question of this paper:
What corporate social media strategy should a company pursue

to strengthen its corporate rebranding online?
5 Social media
In recent years a number of technological, social, economic and legal developments have
enabled users to create and distribute content themselves (OECD, 2007, p. 30). And that is
exactly what these users did and are doing: it is expected that in three years time 70% of the
online content will be user-generated1.
One of the most important developments that caused this tidal wave of bottom-up content was
the availability of websites, web services and software for easy creation, editing, distributing
and sharing of content. These tools are often referred to as social software and the websites
that are created through this software are referred to as social media.
5.1 Definition of social media
Wikipedia defines social media as “anything that uses the internet to facilitate conversations”.
Its expanded definition is: “Social media is the democratization of information, transforming
people from content readers into content publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast
mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and
peers.”2
This expanded variation describes the effects of social media rather than the media
themselves. Wikispace’s Social Media wiki offers a more specific description of the
phenomenon for social media. It defines social media as “the collection of online tools and
platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each
other”3.4 It is this definition that will be used in this thesis.
1 According to Datamonitor: http://www.immediatefuture.co.uk/the-top-100-brands-in-social-media-/.

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
3 Slight adaptation from: http://socialmedia.wikispaces.com/What+is
4 Interesting about these definitions is of course that they are self-referential: they were drafted by internet users
collaborating through wiki’s, one of the very media the definitions describe.
5.2 Types of social media
In this chapter several of the more popular types of social media will be described.
5.2.1 Weblogs
Although there is quite some discussion about what really constitutes a web log, or blog5, it is
most easily described as a website on which somebody posts new entries which are presented
in reverse chronological order (latest entry is shown first)6. Most blogs are text driven, but
they can also contain photos, videos or other multimedia files. The majority of the blogs
enable readers to react to entries either directly in the blog or through trackbacks,
automatically generated links to blog postings elsewhere, reacting on these posting. This
enables a blog owner to react on a blog posting on their own website; a link to this reaction
is shown with the original posting.
Blogging became popular as a tool for the publication of content on personal websites
because of the ease of use they provided compared to other technologies. However, blogs
have also found their way into the business arena: companies are maintaining blogs to
publish content, often aimed at specific target audiences, such as job seekers, or potential
customers.
5.2.2 Wikis
A wiki is a website set up with content management software that enables multiple users to
create and edit content. Because of their collaborative nature, wikis are often used within
companies or groups as knowledge systems. This means that these websites are often not
publicly accessible.
The most prominent example of a public wiki is Wikipedia7, the online encyclopedia that
currently has over 9 million articles in 252 languages, all written by volunteers8.
5 See e.g. http://scobleizer.com/2006/08/20/torres-says-half-of-all-live-spaces-arent-blogs/#comment-77769,

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/31/what-is-the-definition-of-a-blog/ and
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050929/
6 Based on definition from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
7 http://www.wikipedia.org/
8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
5.2.3 Social networks

Social networks are “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or
semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom
they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made
by others within the system” (boyd, 2007). Some examples of these networks are MySpace,
Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing, of which the first two are primarily aimed at networks of
friends and the latter two on professional networks.
5.2.4 Sharing services

Sharing services are websites through which users can share multimedia assets, such as
photos, videos, documents, presentations or bookmarks. The users can make these assets
available to specific others or to the public. Sharing services can offer functionality for
visitors to react to assets, to rate them or to send them on to other users. Examples of these
websites are Flickr (photo sharing), YouTube (videos), Google Docs (documents),
SlideShare (presentations) and del.icio.us (bookmarks).
5.2.5 Podcasts
Podcasts are multimedia files which are distributed over the internet, often using syndication
techniques, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.9 Podcasts can
be considered the poor man’s radio station or television station. They enable people to
produce their own audio or video show with relatively simple means and send them out to
their audience through the internet.
5.2.6 Virtual worlds

Virtual worlds are “computer-based simulated environments intended for its users to inhabit
and interact via avatars”10. Mostly, these worlds consist of two-dimensional or three-
dimensional environments in which the users are represented as humanoids. These worlds
allow multiple users to occupy the same virtual room and interact with each other, e.g. in
games. The best-known examples are Second Life, EverQuest, World of Warcraft and
RuneScape.
9 Based on the definition on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting

10 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_world
5.3 Social media visitors
Social media have found their way into the general public’s media diet. A recent study
amongst German heavy internet users found that 87.3% of them read blogs and 34.6% write
on one or more blogs (Zerfass and Bogosyan, 2007). 55% of American teens have online
profiles (Lenhart and Madden, 2007), while at least 57% create content for the internet
(Lenhart and Madden, 2005).
MySpace, the largest social network community in the world, has 289 million profiles, while
Facebook, the number two, has 73.5 million11. Monthly, respectively 68 million and 26
million people from all ages, educational and income brackets visit these sites (Atal, 2007).
Blogs are also hugely popular. Concrete numbers are hard to find. Some sources simply state
that there are over 70 million blogs worldwide and the number is growing at a rate of some
120.000 blogs per day and these blogs are filled with over 1,5 million postings per day.12 But
the China Internet Network Information Center claims that in China alone there are some
73 million weblogs, run by approximately 47 million users13. Even if we can’t be sure which
numbers are correct, they are impressive enough to understand that blogs in particular and
social media in general are popular destinations on the internet. This statement is further
supported by the fact that out of the global top 10 most visited websites 6 are social media
websites14.
5.4 Social media contributors
Now that we’ve established that social media are highly visited, it is interesting to find out
who is responsible for the creation of the content in social media. A popular belief on the
internet is the 90-9-1 rule: out of every 100 visitors, only one person will actively contribute to
a social media website, 9 will react to it by commenting or editing, and 90 will only read or
view it (Arthur, 2006). This participation inequality (Nielsen, 2006) is supported by findings
from social media such as YouTube, which has 100 million downloads vs. 65.000 uploads
per day, resulting in a creator-to-consumer ratio of 0,5%, and Wikipedia, for which more
than 70% of the content was written by its top 1,8% editors (Arthur, 2006).
11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
12 http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html
13 http://www.cnnic.cn/html/Dir/2007/12/27/4954.htm
14 http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none
The level of participation can be influenced by the specific functionality of a website. By

making it easy to initiate a conversation or to participate in them, the participation can be
stimulated. On the other hand, the easier it is to react to content, the less connected people
will feel to the site or to the discussion or to each other (Xia et al., 2007).
5.5 Properties of social media
boyd (in press: 9) defines four properties of mediating technologies that distinguish normal,
face-to-face conversations from those between networked people, namely:
 Persistence: networked communications are recorded indefinitely, enabling

asynchronous communications and extending the period of existence.
 Searchability: online conversations can easily be indexed and found through search
engines, especially conversations in text format.
 Replicability: networked communications can be replicated verbatim so there is no
difference between the original and the copied content.
 Invisible audiences: it is impossible to determine who will take note of any networked
communications.
While boyd15 argues that these properties “affect both the potential audience and the context
in which the expression is received” (in press: 9), one can argue that they also affect the
subjects being discussed, e.g. companies and its brands. Opinions being discussed between
the networked people will remain available for a long, indefinite time, are highly findable
through search engines and can easily be forwarded. This sums up nicely why it is important
for companies to keep track of these online conversations.
The only aspect that is of less importance to the subject is the invisibility of the audiences.
Even if the identities of the entire audience of an online conversation were known
- something of which one cannot be sure on the internet most of the time -, it would be very
hard to determine their relationship to the company and its brand. A member of the
audience could be a direct customer, an end user, a supplier, a potential employee or be part
of the general public.
15 danah boyd prefers her name to be written without capitals: http://www.danah.org/name.html.

Therefore, it would be more interesting to know more about the (potential) size of the audience.
On the generic level of social media types, this property is determined by the penetration of
the social media type.
The four properties don’t apply equally to each type of social media. The persistence of
conversations on weblogs is most likely higher than of those in virtual worlds such as Second
Life, simply because the weblog discussions are stored and the Second Life conversations by
default aren’t. Also, written articles are better searchable than video messages on YouTube,
primarily because most search engines focus on text search.
Therefore, the level to which these properties apply to social media will determine their
potential impact on companies and brands. In the table on the next page an overview is
provided of the level to which the properties apply to types of social media.
Type of social Persistence Searchability Replicability Audience size

media
Blogs High. All blog postings High. High number of High. Content can easily High. 80% + of internet
and comments are links between weblogs, be copied. users visit blogs (Zerfass
stored on the website. frequent updating and & Bogosyan, 2007).
text-based content
results in high search
results in major search
engines.
Wiki’s High. All versions of a High. Text-based High. Content can easily Medium, as most wiki’s
wiki entry are stored, content and high be copied. serve niches. Exception
even after being number of incoming is Wikipedia, which has
changed. links make wiki entries a wide audience.
popular search results.
Social High. Conversations High. Text-based High. Content can easily Medium. Top social
networks taking place through the content, high linkability, be copied. networks have some
social network are so easily searched and 300 to 500 million
stored indefinitely. high in search results. profiles combined.
However, most users
don’t use social
networks for messaging.
Sharing High. Assets, tags and Medium high. Tags and High. Content can easily Medium to high,
services comments are stored. comments are text- be copied. depending on sort of
based, less focus on asset.
discussion, high
linkability.
Podcasts Medium high. Most Medium high. Tags and Medium. Entire audio Low. Technically
podcasts are available comments are text- or video message can be challenging to listen on
indefinitely, but some based, linkability limited copied, but threshold MP3 player and often
are only available for a because hard to for sharing of specific niche programs.
limited time period. deeplink (link to specific pieces of messages
moment in audio or because of tools and
video message). knowledge required.
Virtual worlds Low. Conversations in Low. Conversations Low. Proprietary nature Low (e.g. Second Life
online worlds are stored mostly not stored, so of virtual worlds make only had 44.000 users in
only sporadically. not searchable. sharing assets and the Netherlands at its
actions through other peak, early 200716).
platforms hard.
Table 1 Properties of types of social media
16 http://www.nu.nl/news.jsp?n=1047920&c=55
From the overview above it appears that blogs, wiki’s and sharing services are the most likely
types of social media to potentially enable online discussions with a sufficiently large
audience to influence a company’s corporate or product brands. That being said, it can be
hard to discern these specific types as many websites combine several types of social media.
One example is that many of the social network services enable their users to maintain blogs
and offer services to share photos, videos, etc.
5.6 Impact of social media on corporate brands
From earlier paragraphs it has become clear that social media enable people to create and
publish their own content. In doing so, some are also addressing issues concerning
companies, influencing these companies’ brands. They do this for different reasons and with
different attitudes, ranging from positive to negative from the company’s perspective.
The public’s behavior in social media can be categorized into three categories: collaborative
behavior, socially constructive behavior and aggressive, destructive behavior (Gasser and
Palfrey, 2007). These will be clarified below.
5.6.1 Collaborative behavior

Collaborative behavior is the interaction between a consumer and a company where the user
seeks a positive result for the company and himself by providing relevant feedback on the
company’s products and services. Even though the feedback itself can be negative, the user’s
attitude is positive towards the company and its products and services.
An example of this collective behavior can be found in any beta-testing of software.

Although the comments, often provided publicly, can be harsh, direct and apparently
negative, the goal of the users is to help the company provide better software for the
customers and thereby to the users themselves.
Another, more specific, example is Jeff Jarvis’ ‘Dell Hell’ affair. In June 2005, Jeff, a
communications professional and blogger at weblog BuzzMachine.com, started posting
complaints about Dell’s service on his new pc. Soon he received hundreds, even thousands
of similar complaints form other aggrieved customers. His story was picked up by other large
blogs, and also by the traditional media. From an analysis of the affair it appeared that Jarvis’
post and the subsequent comments and discussions had a larger impact on the public’s
perception of Dell’s service organization than Dell’s own organization itself (Market Sentinel,
2005).
In general, any efforts by consumers to help develop and further improve products and
services fall into this category of behavior. This includes supplier-induced efforts, also
known as customer co-creation, crowd sourcing or open source innovation.
5.6.2 Socially constructive behavior

Users show socially constructive behavior in order to try and achieve organizational change
to improve society, potentially at the cost of the company itself. These users mostly address
corporate issues, such as sustainability, company policies and practices and working
conditions. Social activism will fall into this category of online behavior in most cases.
One example of this behavior concerns Dutch oil company Shell. A former employee in
Malaysia posted criticism about Shell’s policies on oil reserves and safety on the weblog of a
long-time critic of the company. Even though the employee, Dr Huong, had Shell’s best
interests in mind and had communicated his worries internally first, the company sued him
for defamation17.
5.6.3 Aggressive, destructive behavior

A user can also be out to purely vent his frustration with the company or even to harm it,
potentially to put himself in a position to profit from the company’s damaged position. This
behavior can be categorized as aggressive and destructive and is aimed at damaging the
reputation or brand of a company.
Three criteria are common characteristics for this kind of behavior: the sender’s intention to
do some kind of harm, the existence of some sort of damage as a result of a sender’s online
behavior, and the violation of social and/or legal norms by the sender.
One example of this kind of behavior is American blogger Aaron Wall who was sued by
Traffic Power for defamation and publication of trade secrets in 200518. A more specific
example of aggressive, destructive behavior is the spread of rumors about a company in
order to influence its stock price.
17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
6 Complexity and network theory – an introduction
6.1 Complexity theory
In 1948, Warren Weaver recognized the difference in advancements made until 1900 in
physical sciences compared to those in life sciences. According to Weaver, the difference lay
in the fact that physical sciences concerned “two-variable problems of simplicity”, whereas the life
sciences had hardly begun explaining the mechanisms making up biological events because
of their complexity (Weaver 1948).
He distinguished disorganized and organized complexity. Disorganized complexity results from a

system with a large number of variables with individually erratic behavior. The system as a
whole however, has average properties that can be analyzed through statistical methodology.
The only problem was that the means to calculate the large number of variables were not
available yet. Organized complexity on the other hand, contains a sizeable number of variables
which are interrelated and influence each other through their behavior to form “an organic
whole”. Weaver pleaded that science had to learn how to deal with this organized complexity
(ibidem.).
This plea meant that a paradigm shift was needed from science in the reductionist tradition
of Newton, which models reality to its simplest components and then uses these to describe
them “in a complete, objective and deterministic manner” (Heylighen 2008). Furthermore,
the study of complexity had to break with the classical division of sciences as complexity is
not limited to life sciences as described by Weaver, but it is apparent in a large number of
other fields, such as mathematics, social sciences and physics, if not in all sciences. This also
means that the study of complexity itself is hard to define “because complexity research is
trying to grapple with questions that defy all the conventional categories” (Waldrop 1992,
p. 9).
But even though complexity can be recognized in issues in a wide variety of scientific fields,
these issues have a lot in common as they all refer to complex adaptive networks that share
certain characteristics. The systems undergo spontaneous self-organization, are adaptive, and are
situated at the edge between order and chaos. The elements in the system continuously organize
themselves to better handle internal and external disturbances, constantly reacting to each
others actions, thereby adapting for constant change. In doing this, they balance order and
chaos, and show “behaviors in which the components of the system never quite lock into
place, yet never quite dissolve into turbulence, either” (Waldrop 1992, p. 293). This way, the
system finds itself in equilibrium, a steady state of continuous change, without any
centralized control.
6.2 Network theory
The result of the self-organization can be represented as a so-called complex network. In the
initial state of an emerging complex network the agents, also referred to as elements or
actors, interact randomly with any agent in their direct vicinity. However, agents then start to
develop preferences for retaining some interactions, turning them into permanent links, and
discarding others. These permanent links tie the agents together into a network, in which the
agents themselves can be seen as the nodes.
An agent’s self-organization is aimed, sometimes consciously and explicitly, at constantly

improving its position and ‘fitness’ within the network. The agent seeks to generate, sustain
or improve ties with other agents and shows specific behavior in order to survive or even
obtain a better position within the network. These local actions at the level of the agents lead
to changing patterns on the global network level (Ethier, unknown). We therefore refer to
these specific complex networks as complex adaptive networks (Monge, 2003).
The fact that local actions lead to patterns on a network level means that even though
complex adaptive networks may be “intrinsically unpredictable and uncontrollable”
(Heylighen 2008, p. 2) because of their nature, we can analyze its qualitative behavior
through network analysis. Through this analysis, researchers have found that complex
adaptive networks show specific characteristics which distinguish them from ‘normal’
networks: the small-world effect, clustering, and scale-free networks.
6.2.1 Small-world effect

The small-world effect can be observed in networks in which the diameter of the network,
the maximum length of the shortest path connecting two nodes, is relatively small compared
to the number of nodes. This phenomenon is more popularly recognized from the “six
degrees of separation” that Stanley Milgram found in an experiment in the sixties.
In this experiment, Milgram asked people to send an acquaintance of his a letter. However,
he did not provide an address but asked the participants to hand the letter to someone they
suspected would be ‘socially closer’ to the addressee and ask them to do the same. Most of
the letters arrived, on average within six steps.
After this experiment Milgram claimed that despite the six billion inhabitants of our planet,
any person in the world can be traced to any other by a chain of five or six acquaintances,
rendering the world “small”. In analyzing the small-world effect on the worldwide web,
Barabási found that any two online documents were separated by approximately 19 clicks on
an estimated total of one billion documents (Barabási, 2001).
In a regular network, links exist only according to strict rules. The small-world effect can be
easily introduced in such regular networks by adding a small number of random links
(Buchanan, 2002; as cited by Scharnhorst, 2003). These links, connecting nodes that are
otherwise not directly linked, drastically reduce the diameter of the network.
6.2.2 Clustering
Another characteristic of complex networks is clustering, which means that there is a high
probability that friends of friends are also directly linked. This means that if agent A is linked
to agent B, and agent B is linked to agent C, the chance that A and C are directly linked as
well is higher than in normal probability. Through clustering, groups or communities start to
form within a larger network.
Other than the small-world effect, clustering will increase the distance between two random
nodes in a network as clusters have many links inside the cluster itself, but only a few outside
it.
6.2.3 Scale-free networks

In a regular network all agents have approximately the same number of links to other agents.
However, in complex adaptive networks the numbers of links that agents have to each other
are not evenly distributed. In fact, this distribution tends to follow a power law: some agents
have very many links, while many agents only have a small number (Barabási, 2001). The
highly linked agents in a network are the hubs that connect many different agents and clusters
of agents, thereby decreasing the distance in a network.
The most likely explanation for the power law distribution is preferential attachment: new agents
in a network prefer to be linked to agents that already have a large number of links (Albert &
Barabási, 2002). They pursue these links to improve their personal network fitness,
meanwhile further improving the fitness of the already heavily linked agent. This effect is
more popularly referred to as “the rich get richer”.
6.2.4 Assortative degree correlations

Complex networks, and especially social networks, are also characterized by assortative
degree correlations (Nekovee et al., 2007). This is a specific case of the above described
preferential attachment meaning that highly linked agents in a network preferably link to
other agents with many ties.
6.3 The internet as complex adaptive network
The internet as referred to in general is in fact a multi-layered concept that consists of at least
three levels of networks. The technological network is the infrastructure of the internet, built up
from computers, routers and connections (wired and wireless). The information network is the
level at which information is being transferred. Examples are e-mail, Usenet and the World
Wide Web in which documents are the nodes, linked together through hyperlinks. The social
network is made up by the people interacting with each other through the internet, either by e-
mail, chat or through social media such as discussed in this thesis.
One can claim that “all systems are complex adaptive systems” (Harris & Zeisler, 2002),
which would automatically lead to the conclusion that at least the social network layer of the
internet is just that. And there are several clear signals to support that conclusion.
In an analysis of the economy as a complex adaptive system, John Holland, a leading

researcher in complexity, compares the characteristics of such a system to the global
economy (Waldrop, 1992, p. 144-147). To a large extent, this comparison applies to the
internet seamlessly.
The first characteristic is that the system consists of agents acting in parallel, defining their own
situations through their interactions with other agents and constantly acting and reacting to
each other. This is true for the people using the internet to communicate, but also for the
information on the web. This is most clearly illustrated by the fact that a document’s search
ranking in the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! heavily depends on the
number of links to that document. Therefore, the status of information is determined by
people creating new information that links to it. Furthermore, in social media it is quite
common that the information that is being linked to acknowledges that link with a backtrack
link (see chapter 5.2.1 on page 9), thus influencing the status of that information. This
interaction is a good example of information defining its own situation through interaction
with other agents.
Also, complex adaptive systems have a highly dispersed control, or, as some might say, no control
at all. Any coherent behavior will only arise from competition and coordination between the
agents in the network. Qvortup (2006) illustrates this point by referring to the international
commotion about the Mohammed cartoons in Denmark and the fact that no formal control,
e.g. from governments, sorted any effect in stopping the commotion. Another interesting
example is the student protests in the Netherlands at the end of November 2007. These
protests, aimed at reducing the number of school hours to improve educational quality, were
“massive, spontaneous and without any form of organization” (Versluis, 2007). Students
were incited to take parts in the protest primarily through messages on the internet (and via
their mobile phones). Students received several messages, all different and through different
‘ties’, but there was no way to find out where the messages had originated. More than 300
websites concerning the actions were created on the country’s most popular social network
site, Hyves, and there are more than 700 movies of the actions on YouTube. Through the
teenagers’ constant interactions, to a large extent online, there is no way to determine who
initiates actions, there’s no hierarchy at all (ibidem.).19
The second characteristic is that a complex adaptive system has many levels of organization, in
which agents on one level serve as building blocks for agents at a higher level. This holds
true for the internet as well. As pointed out earlier, the internet consists of several levels. The
agents on the technological level, pc’s, connections, routers, servers, etc., are needed to
enable the network of information. And the information is needed in order to connect the
people, agents in the social level. Even within these network levels there are a number of
levels of organization distinguishable. On the information level, several documents can
constitute a web page, several web pages together form a website, etc.
19 This example not only illustrates lack of central control on the internet, but also the effects in other, offline,
parts of society, and thereby the fact that the internet is an integral part of that ‘social network’.
An important aspect is that the building blocks are constantly being revised and rearranged within
complex adaptive networks as the agents and the networks gain experience. This
evolutionary process, also being referred to as self-reflection, means that successful links will
be repeated whereas less successful ones will not, and that reorganization will take place to
improve the success rate. This behavior can be witnessed in the preferential attachment as
mentioned above, where links to already highly linked documents or people are most popular
because they provide status, but also in the creation of new websites, new online networks,
etc. aimed at providing new possibilities for the agents for building up a position in the
network.
The third characteristic is anticipation and prediction of the future. Every complex adaptive system is
constantly predicting the future by looking at its own internal models. The system and its
agents have learned how to react to certain circumstances in the world around it and are
anticipating these circumstances. This holds true on all levels of the internet, even on the
most fundamental of them, the technological level. The technology stems from military data
systems that were built in such a way that they would automatically reroute data streams if
parts of the network would collapse, e.g. from demolition in a war. Information is split into
numerous small data packets that each find their own way through the network, only to be
joined again into their original state at their destionation. The system learns from these
interruptions and anticipates them.
Finally, complex adaptive systems are characterized by niches. These niches can be exploited
by agents if they adapt to that niche properly. The abundance of niches can be found in all
aspects of the internet, e.g. in the rise of a wide variety of agencies and professionals offering
their specific expertise in internet itself, such as website development and design, online
advertising, search engine optimization and marketing, online public relations, etc. Another
indication is the introduction of many generic services through the internet, from weather
services to online dating, from product comparison websites to online shops, and from
education to job sites.
From the discussion above it is clear that the internet itself is a complex adaptive system with
multiple levels and effects that spread beyond its own boundaries. Or as Bauer (2005: 3)
describes it: “The Internet is a large, adaptive socio-technical system. It is, furthermore, a
multi-layer system in that it is embedded in and has effects on local, sub-national regional,
national, supra-national, regional, and global levels.”
7 Communications in complex systems
Now that we have established that the internet is a complex adaptive network, it is
interesting to investigate how information is spread over these types of networks.
As a study of dynamics on networks rather than of networks, the communications on

networks resemble similar dynamics on other networks, such as the spread of diseases in
social networks, chemical reactions in a physical space, or the spread of viruses on computer
networks. Additionally, also a lot of research in this area was performed on the dissemination
of innovations and of rumors through networks.
When talking about the spread of diseases in networks, in the most basic form this research
looks at whether a network node or agent is infected or not, the number or percentage of
infected agents within the network and the rate at which the epidemic spreads. From this
research it appears that there is a characteristic threshold for epidemics on exponential
networks (Scharnhorst, 2003). This threshold is the result of two processes. First of all there
is the infection process, determining the rate at which nodes are infected. Secondly, there is
the healing process, determining the rate at which infected nodes become healthy again. If
the healing process is stronger than the infection process, no or hardly any infection will take
place. Above a critical point, the infection process will gain momentum, infecting ever
growing parts of the network at an accelerating speed.
Studies have shown that in scale-free networks with a specific rate of link distribution, the
epidemic threshold does not exist and any infection can always infect the entire network
(ibidem.). When looking at real-world scale-free networks, it becomes clear the agents with
the highest number of links are very susceptible to infection themselves, but also make the
entire network susceptible because of the high connectivity the have with other agents.
Lowering of the vulnerability of these networks can therefore be only achieved by focusing
on immunization of the agents with the highest connectivity as they are the most likely
spreaders of the disease.
A study of the spreading of computer viruses through the internet confirmed this tactic.
However, it needs “a global immunization organization that secures a small set of selected
high-traffic routers or Internet domains.” And the downside is that “the self-organized
nature of the Internet does not allow to easily figure out how such an organization should
operate” (Pastor-Satorras & Vespignani, 2001, p.8; as quoted by Scharnhorst, 2003).
A slightly more sophisticated version of this model includes the state recovered, meaning that
after a certain period an infected agent will no longer infect other agents, either because it
has been removed from the network or because it recovered from the disease (Jackson &
Yariv, 2005). This version of the model is very similar to the basic DK rumor model, named
after the authors first describing it in 1965, Daley and Kendal. This model describes the
dissemination of rumors through networks, where each of the agents is either “ignorant”,
“spreader” or “stifler”. Ignorant people have not heard the rumor but are susceptible to it,
spreaders actively spread the rumor and stiflers are agents who know the rumor but have
stopped spreading it. (Boccaletti et al., 2005). In the DK model, a key predictor of whether
an agent knows a rumor is the number of neighboring agents in his network that know and
spread it.
Although this model adds a level of complexity, it still falls short of explaining the spread of
information in complex networks. One of the reasons for that is that the model does not
take into account the underlying social networks along which a rumour spreads. In other
words, it assumes that the network is completely homogeneous (Nekovee, 2007b). It thereby
ignores the different characteristics and roles that agents have in complex adaptive networks,
and also the contents of the message itself.
7.1 Opinion leaders vs. brokers
In the 1940’s and 50’s, two researchers studied the way in which mass media influenced the
public opinion. These researchers, Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz, found that in several
decision-making processes, people were much more influenced by other people than by the
media. A small number of so-called opinion leaders acted as the intermediaries between media
and the general public. Based on these findings, they introduced the concept of the two-step
flow of communications, in which information flows from the mass media to the opinion leaders,
who then pass on the information to the people. Until then, the general idea about the role
of the mass media had been that they directly impregnated individuals with ideas and
opinions, a theory referred to as the hypodermic needle (Watts & Dodds, 2007).
Burt (1999) offers a new perspective on opinion leaders. In his view, opinion leaders are
more precisely opinion brokers who transmit information across the boundaries of their own
groups to other groups. This means that they are not necessarily at the top of their networks,
but more on the edge, and not so much leaders within groups as brokers between groups. By
brokering information they bridge the weak connections between groups, the so-called
structural holes. When talking about information, these holes are gaps between non-redundant
contacts which offer information that is more additive than overlapping. In other words, the
opinion brokers facilitate the flow of new information between groups which would
otherwise not have been connected.
There are two kinds of benefits to be gained from fulfilling the role of opinion brokers:
information benefits and control benefits. Information benefits refer to the connectivity to
information. Brokers have more information because they reach more people indirectly, they
know about the information faster than others because they are at the crossroads of several
groups within a network and the quality of the information is higher because of a higher
diversity of contacts they possess. On top of that, these benefits make an opinion broker
more attractive as a contact in their own network. Control benefits stem from the fact that
brokers can decide which information flows through them to which contacts, providing
them with bargaining power. Additionally, they can choose to adjust their own image with
each contact and to adapt the information to their own needs and image (ibidem.).
These opinion brokers are quite similar to the local bridges as defined by Mark Granovetter
in his famous study “The Strength of Weak Ties” (1973). Granovetter describes a bridge as a
tie between two agents in a network that provides the only path between these two agents.
As both agents have a (large) number of contacts, this bridge is the sole connection between
any contact of A and any contact of B. In reality, situations where there is only one
connection between two people will be rare. However, the function of a bridge can also be
served locally by providing the shortest path between two agents in situations where the
costs of communicating through the longer path are too high. These bridges are called local
bridges.
As can be deducted from the title of the study, the strength of a tie is an important aspect.
The tie strength is defined as “a combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity,
the intimacy (mutual confiding), and the reciprocal services which characterize the tie”
(Granovetter, 1973, p. 1361). His hypothesis is that if two people have a strong tie they will
share a lot of ties with other people20. This means that good friends share other friends, to a
large extent because of the time commitment involved in stronger ties. In other words, if A
has a strong tie to B and a strong tie to C, B and C will most likely also have a tie, either
strong or weak.
Using the –admittedly exaggerated– supposition that in such cases B and C will always have a
tie, it then follows that no strong tie can be a bridge. For information flow, this means that
weak ties that create local bridges provide more and shorter paths within a network.
Information can reach a larger number of people, and traverse greater social difference, such
as path length, when passed through weak ties rather than strong.
Summarizing, opinion leaders are not leaders so much as brokers, connecting several groups
of agents in a network with each other through –most likely– weak ties. These brokers are
essential in the diffusion of information over a network. And since these brokers are
relatively sparse and are potentially findable through network analysis, efforts can be made to
contact and influence these brokers directly in order to make them pass the information on
with as little distortion and noise –as a result of the broker adapting the message to suit his
own needs– as possible.
7.2 Influentials and opinion formation
And that is precisely what companies and other organizations, such as political parties, have
tried over the past few years. With the rise of online social networks the possibilities of
tracking and influencing information brokers have increased, triggering more interest in these
networks, but also the establishment of companies to cater for that need (LaPlante, 2007).
But to think that a relatively small group of influentials can drive trends in complex adaptive
systems seems contradictory. After all, complex adaptive systems have highly dispersed
control and any behavior is the result of competition and coordination between all agents. It
therefore seems unlikely that only a limited number of agents could indeed effect the entire
network. And indeed, the concept of highly influential information brokers appears to be a
simplification that does not do justice to the complex reality.
20 A phenomenon described earlier in this thesis as clustering (see chapter 6.2.2 on page 19).
7.2.1 Cascades of influence

In recent research into so-called cascades of influence, it was found that large-scale changes in
public opinion were not the result of highly influential people influencing everyone else, but
rather of easily influenced people influencing other easily influenced people (Watts & Dodds,
2007).
Cascades are sequences of activations through interpersonal influencing, i.e. a network agent
influencing his network neighbors, who then influence their own neighbors, and so on21. The
scale of cascades can differ with the highest scale being global cascades that “affect many
individuals, propagate for many steps, and are ultimately constrained only by the size of the
population through which they pass” (Watts & Dodds, 2007: 14). These global cascades
require a critical mass consisting of sufficiently many early adopters that are connected to
each other that the network “percolates” throughout the entire influence network. Without a
critical mass, only local cascades will occur.
The research focused on the role of influentials –the minority of agents who influence an
exceptional number of their peers– on cascades. This role appeared to be far less than
suggested in earlier theories. The hypothesis that influentials are in some way essential to
diffusion was clearly not supported, as influentials were neither necessary nor sufficient to
trigger large cascades.
The study was aimed at interpersonal influence. This means that media personalities, etc.,
who may have far greater visibility than ordinary individuals, and whose influence is
transmitted indirectly via media of various forms, were initially not considered. Related to
this distinction between personal and media influence is web-mediated influence, such as
that exerted via blogs, social sharing sites, and online forums. Although individuals can
indeed gain considerable exposure for their views by expressing them online, the influence of
the blogger seems closer to that of a traditional newspaper columnist or professional critic
than that of a trusted confidant, or even a casual acquaintance.
21 Note that such a cascade can involve more than the two steps of the two-step flow of communications. It is
therefore called a multi-step flow.

In fact, under certain circumstances it appeared that in real social networks influentials
actually triggered smaller cascades than average agents. This surprising effect can be
attributed to assortativity, the tendency of influentials to interact with other influentials. As
described earlier (internal cross-reference) assortativity is a characteristic of complex adaptive
systems.
Based on the research, Watts & Dodds conclude that cascades are not the result of a few
highly influential individuals influencing everyone else, but rather of a critical mass of easily
influenced individuals influencing other easy-to-influence people. Influentials only have a
modestly greater chance than average of triggering this critical mass, and only if it this critical
mass already exists.
Although in retrospect it is always possible to reconstruct what seems to be the cause of a

notable social change, there is no way to predict them. Watts & Dodds use the following
analogy: “Major forest fires require a conspiracy of wind, temperature, low humidity, and
combustible fuel that extends over large tracts of land. Just as for large cascades in social
influence networks, when the right global combination of conditions exists, any spark will
do; and when it does not, none will suffice” (2007, p. 34).
7.3 Conclusion
The bottom line then is that so-called influentials are actually not disproportionately
influencing networks and that there really is no way of predicting if and how information will
cascade through a complex network. Is this an unexpected result? Hardly, if one considers
that a model needs to be sufficiently complex in order to explain the complex reality.
Assuming that a limited number of agents have such a large influence on the general opinion
within a network is simply too oversimplified. Or as Luhmann puts it: “One cannot address
external complexity by absolute closure. Only complexity can reduce complexity” (1995: 26;
as quoted by Qvortup, 2006: 352).
Although we may as yet have not come up with a way to predict how communications work
in complex adaptive systems, some of the findings as mentioned before remain valid. For
instance, weak ties still play a vital role in diffusing information through groups within a
network.
Another interesting finding is that once a critical mass exists, the creation of a cascade is
relatively easy. This means that recognition of critical masses could proof to be interesting to
make predictions about which messages will be spread through networks and which will not.
8 Social media in complex networks
Having discussed the way in which information spreads through complex networks, we will
now investigate the role of the internet in general in these communications, and the role of
social media specifically.
8.1 The role of the internet in complex networks
The internet has a specific role in communications within complex networks. As explained
earlier, the internet is a complex network in itself. And as a medium for communications it
helps to manage the complexity of the society in which it is used. As stated before: only
complexity can manage complexity.
In comparison, societies based on oral communications have only little capability for
managing complexity, primarily geographically and historically, limited mainly by its physical
reach and agents’ ability to remember. Thus, only societies with a relatively low level of
complexity can manage themselves through oral media.
During the writing era, the size of a communications community was restricted by access to
the limited number of copies available, the ability to write and read and the preservation of
hand-written documents. The printing era expanded the geographical reach to a global level,
but it was limited by delays in physical transportation, limited reading abilities and the
challenge to organize the growing amount of information (Qvortup, 2006).
The internet has kicked off the digital era. The size of the communications community is
now determined by the number of people with access to the internet, which is limited
compared to during the printed era (despite its apparent rapid growth). On the other hand,
information can be exchanged almost immediately, so delays are minimal, and stored
indefinitely. And even more importantly, the internet integrates all known media into one
converged ‘multi-semantic’ system. These features increase the internet’s internal complexity
enabling it to cope with the ever increasing social complexity, but at the same time create
complexity management problems, such as an abundance of information (ibidem.).
8.2 Social media as weak tie hubs
The internet has enlarged the communications community by connecting smaller

communities previously unconnected because the communications they used before were
not able to handle the additional complexity. Social media have provided people with a low-
threshold access to this platform by enabling them to contribute to it. The result is that
people previously unrelated are now exchanging information and experiences.
Social media are then the only way in which these people are tied. From this singular
medium being used by the agents to communicate with each other, their mutual tie strength
can be deduced. As the tie between two agents strengthens, they will use more media to
communicate with each other. Therefore, for agents otherwise unconnected, we can
conclude that social media connect them through weak ties. As agents with a high numbers
of weak ties, or weak tie hubs, social media are highly capable of introducing new information
to a large number of groups within a network (Haythorntwaite, 2005).
Social media do not only establish new weak-tied relationships. For agents previously
connected, the internet and social media are another medium through which they can
communicate, enabling them to sustain and reinforce their strong-tie relationship. The
primary effect of social media on these relationships is that these relationships themselves
and parts of their mutual communications become public. The clearest example for this is
the social network sites. To a large extent people use these websites to connect to existing
relations (Pew Internet, 2007), thereby making their strong ties explicit, and to communicate
with these relations, making the communications explicit. Since most of these websites are
publicly accessible, the result is that existing private relationships become at least partly
public (Haythorntwaite, 2005).
The public nature of communications through social media, whether between weakly or
strongly tied agents, makes these communications searchable. In theory, information will be
available online until eternity, accessible through search engines. And because social media
are weak tied-agents linking many groups, they have a bigger change of being hyperlinked to
by their visitors, e.g. by people passing on the information within their groups through their
strong ties. Since search engines such as Google use criteria such as proximity, link structure,
link text and number of links to determine their search results (Brin, 1998), information in
social media often ends up between the highest and most used search result. This may lead
to additional previously unconnected agents getting connected, thereby switching latent ties
into weak ones (Haythorntwaite, 2005). In this way, social media reinforce their position as
weak tie hubs.
8.3 Information push and pull in social media
As just described, the public, explicit nature of information in highly-linked social media
makes the information highly searchable and findable. Whereas the information cascades
described earlier are relatively short-lived and pushed by momentum, online information thus
also enables long-term pull of information. We will describe social media’s capabilities to
facilitate both information flows.
8.3.1 Information push: social media as facilitators of information cascades

As discussed, even agents with high numbers of weak ties, such as social media, can not be
regarded as influential (see chapter 7.3 on page 29). However, there is a role for social media
in information cascades.
Information cascades require large numbers of neighboring agents to turn into global
cascades. Rather than using social media to influence their large number of neighboring
agents, social media should be used to helping other agents influence each other. They can
do this by using social media as a platform through which agents can contact each other and
share ideas, information and opinions (Thompson, 2008).
One example of how this may work is a campaign performed by Disneyland Paris in 2007. It
created an interactive poster that was put up in Paris. The poster allowed children to post
their picture and a one-sentence description of their dream, which would then be shown on
the poster. Disneyland Paris then approached fifteen highly visited blogs and rather than
trying to make these blogs mention the campaign favorably, they gave the blogs the
opportunity to each have children post messages for the poster through their websites for
one day. These children could than forward these messages to their friends and family. The
campaign resulted in thousands of messages being sent, not by having the blogs influence the
children, but rather by having the blogs facilitate the children to cascade the information..
The influencing was done by the children, not by the blogs22.
22 Case presented during the conference “Maximising Website and Online Communications Summit” on January
30, 2007 in Amsterdam. Numbers and figures undisclosed.

8.3.2 Information pull: social media as information archive

Even if information does not lead to a cascade, e.g. because of a lack of momentum, or
critical mass, the highly searchable character of social media and the persistence of online
information can help spread the information over a prolonged period of time. In these cases,
the timing depends on the explicit information need of the receiving agent, expressed in an
information pull by using a search engine.
Therefore, some companies perceive social media as a good opportunity to obtain favorable
search results. Other companies, being confronted with unfavorable brand messaging
through social media, make a lot of effort to ensure that the search results for this messaging
are pushed into the lower regions by promoting alternative information. Both approaches
emphasize the interconnectedness of social media with search engines and their mutual
importance and clarify the rise of social media optimization, the generation of publicity through
social media, as an important branding tool.
Summarizing, social media are weak tie hubs within social networks. This status pushes their
importance in search engine results, enabling continuous creation of additional weak ties. In
this position, social media can be considered important information or opinion brokers and
search engines as the agent paving the way for new ties to spread the information or
opinions.
9 Branding in complex networks
As discussed earlier, the way in which information is spread through complex adaptive
networks can not really be predicted. It is interesting to apply this knowledge to theories
about branding and, more specifically, corporate branding.
9.1 Branding as a complex concept
Brands in themselves are a concept resulting from increased complexity. With the rise of
mass production and advances in distribution and communication techniques, successful
economic communication became a challenge at the turn of the 20th century. Customers
were confronted with a large variety of largely similar products, intransparent prices, insecure
availability, various suppliers and middlemen. This over-complexity of consumption
threatened to slow down economic dynamics.
To increase the likelihood of successful economic communication, the economic system had
already introduced money, prices, interest, and payments, all of which reduce complexity
through abstraction. With the growing complexity of a depersonalized economy of mass
production, however, there was a need for a way to provide more meaning to products.
This was when brands were introduced to the economic system. Branding allowed for
additional layers of information, including social value, to be added to products, ‘helping’
customers to make a choice. Brands enabled the abstraction from both suppliers’ and
customers’ underlying intentions by referring to shared cultural meaning. Advertising was
introduced for suggesting favorable interpretations for certain products, making it possible
for brand owners to signal social status and prestige to strangers through their brand choices
(Lüdicke, 2007).
This social function of brands was possible because of other people noticing the same
advertising at the same time, thereby developing a common set of cultural perceptions. The
basic assumption is that people need to exchange information about brands in order to
develop these perceptions, which means that they will add their own meaning to the meaning
as intended by the brand owner.
Obviously, this makes sense from the perspective of complex systems. As described before,
these systems, such as a society, have a highly decentralized control system. There is no
mastermind, or master plan, or clear hierarchical structure. Thus, no one system can
coordinate or control all others. This will then also apply to branding: there is no central
system that controls the way in which a brand is perceived by all agents within the network.
Instead, the meaning of a product as perceived by agents is the result of the interactions
between these agents and the information they receive about the product through those
interactions. The maker of the product and the product itself can be agents in this network,
but they are only partly responsible for a particular agents’ perception of that product and its
brand.
9.2 Social aspect of branding
Although this is hardly a new insight, marketing theories have up until now not, or not
sufficiently, included this social aspect of branding. By their focus on the process of
exchange these theories limit their capacity to embrace emerging practices and to explain the
process of brand building outside the direct influence of the brand owner. In order to do
this, the building of preference towards a brand should be the primary focus of any
marketing theory, with the exchange or transaction as a secondary ‘code’ (Lüdicke, 2007).
It should then be taken into account that the building of preference to a large extent happens
amongst observers communicating about a brand (e.g. talking about the new Apple MacBook
Air) and communicating through a brand (e.g. by buying the Apple MacBook Air and showing
it or telling about it to friends). The goal of branding would then be to enable and encourage
reproduction of strong and broadly accepted distinctions and ongoing communications,
consequently creating ‘social noise’. The more interested the observers are in the message
itself or in the addressed brand, the more likely it is that social connectivity and ongoing
communication will occur.
The paradox, however, is that the more successful brand owners are at having their brand
messages proliferated by society, the more limited the power of the brand owner over these
messages becomes. The ways in which society picks up the messages and extents them into
social life is largely out of the reach of the brand owners. The observers will use and
reproduce the brand messages extensively based on their own agendas. They accept, reject,
or ignore the messages and alter them to fit to their needs. This implies that the brand
owners can find that their brand ends up having unintended meaning (ibidem.).23
In the next chapter we will discuss how organizations can cope with these specific
characteristics of complex networks.
9.3 A branding strategy for complex networks
The fact that a company does not have full control over its own brands does not mean that
there is no control at all. There are ways to stimulate a brand’s success even in complex
environments. This chapter will discuss these ways by defining a strategy for branding in
complex systems.
9.3.1 Messaging
In the preceding chapter, we have implicitly identified some of the conditions for successful
brand messages. The first one of these is that a message needs to be interesting enough for
people to pass them on. The best way to achieve this is by making sure the message appeals
to an agent’s line of perception or personal situation. Depending on the target audience, this
means that a message needs to be concrete and to the point to an extent that the agents can relate
to the brand message, e.g. through quantification of a message.
The second condition is that the message is broadly accepted. This means that the message
needs to be credible from the point of view of the receiver of the message. The implicit
prerequisite is that the initiator of the message has an understanding of the observer’s
perception of a product and its brand. The way in which this understanding can be obtained
is through market research and monitoring of the way in which messages are being received
and reproduced. This will be elaborated on in one of the next paragraphs.
However, one important consequence that is good to note is that the brand identity can not be
too far detached from the brand image or the identity will simply not be accepted. In passing
on brand messages, agents will primarily exchange their views on the brand and its message
in order to make them fit their own needs. This means that the brand image has a bigger
23 One example of this is the Lonsdale clothing company, whose clothing, originally aimed at boxing, was
‘hijacked’ by skinheads in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Ever since, the
brand is associated with right wing extremism in those countries. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonsdale_%28clothing%29.
change of being reproduced rather than the brand identity. To ensure that the identity is
being reproduced, it needs to be credible. Consequently, for a change in brand identity to be
reproduced within a network, agents first have to experience a change in the brand image.
The final condition for brand messages is that they need to be easy to reproduce to enable
receivers to pass the message on to others. One of the ways in which to do that is through
storytelling. By introducing a narrative a brand message can be made to appeal to the receiver’s
imagination, thereby strongly enhancing the change that the agent will remember and
reproduce the narrative.
9.3.2 Monitoring
As mentioned earlier, a message needs to be credible to an audience for it to be passed on. A
solid understanding of the audience’s perception of the brand and product are required for
that. This understanding can be gained by setting up a monitoring system which tracks the
way all (types of) agents receive and reproduce brand messaging, such as mass media,
customers, and competitors. In that process, an organization should utilize its own social
structure such as its sales force, customer support, customer relationship management and
market research. The monitoring should also serve to obtain information on changes in the
dynamics in society that can help spread the brand messaging, such as current events.
9.3.3 Alternative messaging

A brand owner should be prepared for situations in which a brand message is incorrectly
reproduced at a large scale, as well as for the above described changes in dynamics in society.
Alternative versions of the brand message need to be available to oppose unwanted brand
associations and to leverage opportunities to diffuse the original brand message.
9.3.4 Consistency
In situations where audiences will adapt a sender’s brand messages to fit their own needs
before reproducing them, there is all the more reason for the sender to ensure that the initial
messages are consistent. This consistency should apply to all brand messaging, not just the
messaging about the brand, such as advertising, but also messaging through the brand, captured
in the product’s distribution, price, design, service, etc. Consistency in all these facets of the
brand will drive acceptance of the brand message with its observers and consequently
encourage reproduction.
9.3.5 Organization
Although this last insight may not seem ground-breaking at first sight, it does require a
paradigm shift for some organizations and brand owners. As discussed earlier, it means that
the creation of meaning in order to induce a brand preference is the primary goal of
marketing, only to be followed by the exchange. As a consequence, marketing departments
need to reorganize internally to reflect the bigger influence of branding on other aspects of
marketing, such as product design, pricing, etc., and to allow for a stronger focus on
continuous monitoring of, reacting to and interacting with the social network in which it
operates.
Furthermore, they will need to claim a more prominent role within the organization as such
and redefine their relation with other departments, such as finance, human resources, etc. in
order to align the entire organization’s activities to the corporate brand.
9.4 Corporate branding in complex networks
The strategy for branding in complex systems as defined above also applies to corporate
branding. However, there are a few specific areas that need specific attention.
As described, the brand messages need to be accepted by the audiences in order to be spread
and therefore have to match their perceptions of the brand. Corporate brand associations are
even more strongly tied to reality as they have to be credible and attractive to a large number
of specific audiences or stakeholders. Employees and potential employees, business
customers, suppliers, financial markets, governments, and journalists will all monitor the
corporate brand messages seriously and critically to evaluate a company’s economic and
social efforts (Kralingen, 2003).
This means that rebranding on a corporate level will require a rebranding of the entire
internal organization in order to achieve the required consistency, i.e. to make sure that the
newly introduced brand identity (the branding about the brand) matches the customer’s
experience with the organization, e.g. through price setting, service, account management,
logistics, etc. (the branding through the brand). This process of internal branding should
precede the external branding to allow for the organizational change to occur. Otherwise
external audiences will reproduce the new brand identity messaging while including their old
personal brand image and specifically describing the discrepancies, thus harming the new
brand.
The advantage, on the other hand, is that corporate brand associations, once achieved, are
harder to imitate by competitors and can therefore provide a sustainable competitive
advantage.
9.4.1 Corporate reputation management

The above described holistic approach to branding as a company compass for its external
and internal activities makes it very similar to corporate reputation management. Where
traditionally the distinction could be made that corporate brand management was about
communicating the corporate identity and reputation management consisted of this
communication as well as making sure that the company’s activities were aligned with it (Van
der Jagt, 2004), the distinction between the two becomes blurry in light of the subject of this
thesis.
A corporate reputation can be measured by its performance in six categories, or pillars

(ibidem.), being emotional appeal, product & service, vision & leadership, workplace
environment, financial environment and social responsibility. To obtain a solid reputation, a
company should score well in all these categories, and preferably outperform its competitors
in them.
The way in which a company is perceived can be defined as the reflection of three types of
expression of the company’s identity, behaviour, communications and symbolism, of which a
company’s behaviour is most important: it will be the company’s actions on which it will be
judged.
Corporate reputations are the result of information processing and perception on three
levels. The first level is first-hand experience, being the individual perception of somebody
dealing with a company, either as a customer, employee, investor or external observer. The
second level is word-of-mouth, where people’s perceptions are formed based on other people
relating their first-hand experiences to them. The third level is from the (mass) media, where
perceptions are based on what media tell about a company. In this set-up the higher level will
have the most impact on one’s perception of a company (Van der Jagt, 2004).
It can then be deduced that a company’s behaviour in any category or pillar will always lead
to first-hand experience and may lead to word-of-mouth. This makes the behaviour part of the
branding territory, leading to a complete overlap between corporate brand management and
corporate reputation management. Therefore it is this thesis’ contention that no distinction
should be made between those disciplines and that corporate reputation management should
be part of the corporate brand manager’s responsibilities. Also, an integrated approach is
needed between corporate brand and reputation management and brand management on a
business or product level.
One example that supports this contention is the wide-spread outrage that broke out when
Anders Moberg was appointed as the new CEO of Ahold, based in the Netherlands, in 2003.
Moberg succeeded Cees van der Hoeven, who was forced to resign after creating a financial
chaos, requiring the company to lay off people throughout the entire organization. The
outrage started when Moberg’s remuneration was made public: his base salary was said to be
approximately € 10 million a year, independent of the results he would achieve. The media
had a field day with knowledge, but the general public felt offended as well. Chain e-mails
were sent around and websites were quickly set up to initiate a boycott of Albert Heijn,
Ahold’s flagship supermarket chain in the Netherlands. These actions were sufficiently
successful to convince Moberg, who at first reacted indifferently to the outburst of public
anger, to eventually accept a significantly lower -though still generous- remuneration.
This example shows that small actions on an agents’ level can cause effects on a network
level. It also demonstrates that actions on a corporate and organizational level can influence
both the corporate brand, e.g. the employer and investor brand, and underlying business
brands.
9.4.2 Corporate brand PR

As described above, branding in complex environments requires continuous monitoring of
the brand messaging by agents in the network, as well as the availability of alternative
messaging to correct incorrect or inconsistent messages. These processes are actually quite
well known for public relations professionals. It therefore makes sense to stimulate close
collaboration between brand managers and PR professionals, especially if they are
represented on the same organizational level. In large companies, this is often the case on the
corporate level and less so on lower levels, where PR will be a role on an organizational level,
whereas brands are often product-related.
Brand managers will need to learn to assume an observing and responsive role in order to
constantly be aware of the audience’s brand perceptions and be able to react to those. By
extending the existing corporate monitoring service by including other channels (e.g. social
media) and the organization’s own social structure (e.g. its account management), and by
sharing their expertise in story telling, PR professionals can help brand managers cope better
with their complex environments.
9.4.3 Corporate brand architecture

As described earlier in this thesis, there are three categories of online public behavior:
collaborative behavior, socially constructive behavior and aggressive, destructive behavior.
The latter two categories are aimed at the company as such, which means that corporate
branding is susceptible to this kind of behavior.
The first category, collaborative behavior, takes place at the level of a company’s brands and
products. Whether this kind of behavior influences the corporate branding, directly or
indirectly, depends on a company’s brand architecture.
A company’s brand strategy can more or less be classified in any of four categories: house of
brands, endorsed brands, subbrands and branded house (Aaker and Joachimsthaler, 2000).
The first category has the strongest link between the corporate brand and the product
brands, the last one the loosest. This implies that the positive collaborative behavior
regarding a company’s products and services will have the strongest effect on a corporate
brand in the situation of a branded house and hardly any effect in case of a house of brands.
It also means that corporate branding professionals in organizations with a house of brands
branding strategy can expect mostly negative, or at least seemingly negative, online behavior.
The only way to profit from positive collaborative behavior is by defining a stronger
relationship between the corporate and product brands, in other words by introducing a
subbrand or endorsed brand strategy.
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The Definition of a

Corporate Social Media Strategy

A thesis submitted to obtain the degree of

Master of Marketing Management

Erasmus University Rotterdam / SRM

7.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................29

Arno for reading along and giving feedback,

and Kiki for her smiles.

What corporate social media strategy should a company pursue

5.1 Definition of social media

1 According to Datamonitor: http://www.immediatefuture.co.uk/the-top-100-brands-in-social-media-/.

5.2 Types of social media

5 See e.g. http://scobleizer.com/2006/08/20/torres-says-half-of-all-live-spaces-arent-blogs/#comment-77769,

5.2.3 Social networks

5.2.4 Sharing services

5.2.6 Virtual worlds

9 Based on the definition on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting

5.3 Social media visitors

5.4 Social media contributors

The level of participation can be influenced by the specific functionality of a website. By

5.5 Properties of social media

 Persistence: networked communications are recorded indefinitely, enabling

15 danah boyd prefers her name to be written without capitals: http://www.danah.org/name.html.

Type of social Persistence Searchability Replicability Audience size

Table 1 Properties of types of social media

5.6 Impact of social media on corporate brands

5.6.1 Collaborative behavior

An example of this collective behavior can be found in any beta-testing of software.

5.6.2 Socially constructive behavior

5.6.3 Aggressive, destructive behavior

6 Complexity and network theory – an introduction

6.1 Complexity theory

He distinguished disorganized and organized complexity. Disorganized complexity results from a

6.2 Network theory

An agent’s self-organization is aimed, sometimes consciously and explicitly, at constantly

6.2.1 Small-world effect

6.2.3 Scale-free networks

6.2.4 Assortative degree correlations

6.3 The internet as complex adaptive network

In an analysis of the economy as a complex adaptive system, John Holland, a leading

7 Communications in complex systems

As a study of dynamics on networks rather than of networks, the communications on

7.1 Opinion leaders vs. brokers

7.2 Influentials and opinion formation

7.2.1 Cascades of influence

therefore called a multi-step flow.

Although in retrospect it is always possible to reconstruct what seems to be the cause of a

8 Social media in complex networks

8.1 The role of the internet in complex networks

8.2 Social media as weak tie hubs

The internet has enlarged the communications community by connecting smaller

8.3 Information push and pull in social media

8.3.1 Information push: social media as facilitators of information cascades

30, 2007 in Amsterdam. Numbers and figures undisclosed.

8.3.2 Information pull: social media as information archive

9 Branding in complex networks

9.1 Branding as a complex concept

9.2 Social aspect of branding

9.3 A branding strategy for complex networks

9.3.3 Alternative messaging

9.4 Corporate branding in complex networks

9.4.1 Corporate reputation management

A corporate reputation can be measured by its performance in six categories, or pillars