Background: The authors tentatively believe they have identified a new trend within branding, where an established brand launches a new and innovative product that is somehow related to the brand’s core values, interactively through a complementary marketing communication video. Support for the relevance to further investigate the identified trend can be found in academic literature. Due to today’s competitive marketplace, several researchers emphasize the importance to further explore and evaluate creative customer-based brand equity-building strategies. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore the identified trend and whether this identified trend can assist in building customer- based brand equity. The authors of this thesis use the Volvo LifePaint campaign as a case for the study. The research questions concerns what associations consumers make to the launched product when being exposed to its complementary marketing communication video, and whether these associations are transferable to the brand. Method: The method of this research was qualitative and the primary data collection was collected through 10 semi-structured interviews, as well as observations through netnography. Conclusion: Based on the findings from the case study, the authors conclude that the identified trend may serve as a creative branding strategy for an established brand, to assist in building customer-based brand equity. However, the authors noticed that unfavorable associations also may be created and transferred, which potentially can harm the brand.

Internet memes have in recent years become a prevalent phenomenon which brands have now started to use in their marketing communication efforts. Previous brand personality research suggested that communication style can change a brand’s perceived personality from a consumer’s perspective. The purpose of the thesis was to investigate if there is a difference in how brands are perceived depending on whether memes or more traditional images are used in marketing communication. The theoretical framework for this thesis was Geuens et al. (2009) A New Measure of Brand Personality. An experimental design was applied by having a total of 98 respondents answer one of two surveys. The respondents were exposed to a meme or a more traditional advert from the dating app, Tinder, and then asked to answerer questions regarding the brand’s personality. Hypothesis testing was conducted to see if any significant differences between the groups could be found. Results showed that respondent did perceive the brand differently on two dimensions of brand personality depending on what image they saw. However, lack of internal reliability in multiple dimensions in A New Measure of Brand Personality, questioned the scales applicability. The thesis contributes to a better understanding of how memes can be used in marketing communication.