This paper examines the co-creation of human brands identities exemplified by celebrities in a stakeholder-actor approach. By bringing together the theoretical web of service-dominant logic, stakeholder theory, actor-network theory, and consumer culture theory, we argue that human brand identities are co-created by multiple stakeholder-actors that have resources and incentives in the activities that make a up an enterprise of a human brand, including the celebrities themselves, consumer-fans, and business entities. By utilizing an observational, archival netnographic data from popular social media channels, four exemplars of celebrity identities from the Philippines demonstrate the co-creation of human brands. Findings illustrate key stakeholder-actors’ participations, production and consumption, and integrations of resources and incentives in the co-creation process as articulated in social media. The co-creation process happens through sociological translations codes namely: social construction and negotiation of identities, parasocialization, influence projection, legitimization, and utilization of human brand identities. These dynamics of human brand identity advance a stakeholder-actor paradigm of service co-creation that is adaptive to the predominant consumer culture and human ideals that surround the celebrity. Implications and future research on celebrity brand marketing management are discussed.
Via an exploratory survey we decoded the interplay of the multiple points of attachment leading the consumer to the soccer field. Results indicate that local soccer player brands’ conceptual property which lies with the shared bond of team identification and is leveraged reciprocally, adds both to the human and the organizational brand equity.