Distributed Leadership: When People Claim Brand Ownership

The abstract is published online only. If you did not include a short abstract for the online version when you submitted the manuscript, the first paragraph or the first 10 lines of the chapter will be displayed here. If possible, please provide us with an informative abstract. Current consumer-brand relationship scenario is increasingly characterized by empowered individuals who claim ownership of brands and brand-related contents and manifest leadership in activating, nurturing, and quitting conversations that contribute to brand value creation or destruction beyond the efforts of marketers. When brand actors are only one of the players and not even the most impactful one in generating, modifying, or even overturning brand meanings and values, who does then take the lead in making sense of brands? And how does that happen? This chapter aims at elucidating the concept of distributed leadership of current networked individuals toward their brands and support it with anecdotal evidence of groundbreaking practices of people leadership in brand value creation at the global level.