Work

Logos unleashed: Giving in creatively to the global desire for brandedness

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This article reflects on the global appeal of brandedness as a central mode of creativity in contemporary capitalism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork including focus group interviews and visual data from Mozambique and beyond, it examines how practices of copying, remixing and hybridising logos blur the moral and aesthetic boundaries between authenticity and imitation, originality and repetition. By bringing together informal counterfeit production in the Global South and official brand collaborations in the Global North, I argue that both operate through the same combinational logic of creativity, one that thrives on excess, circulation and the affective power of the logo. Reframing creativity as a collective process, a form of commoning, the article suggests that the symbolic life of brands has escaped corporate ownership to become a shared cultural resource. The hybrid-fake should thus not be understood as an absence of authenticity but as an expression of participation, joy and aesthetic experimentation within a global economy of signs.

Source: European Journal of Cultural Studies

DOI: 10.1177/13675494261415997

Author: Johanna von Pezold

Institution: University of Amsterdam

Language: English

Topic: Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification

Subfield: Marketing

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,650

Funder: European Research Council